One Hell of a Show
by MillyVeil
Summary: Tony is kidnapped for ransom and Clint gets nabbed along with him. It's rough on both of them. That's the sanitized version. [captivity, non-con, injury]
1. Chapter 1

Clint stopped struggling against his bonds and sagged back down onto the floor. "You're finished," he ground out between clenched teeth. " _Finished_."

Jackson lay face down in the middle of the room, hands still cuffed behind his back. The floor was wet and dark under his head. Single bullet. Point blank. The guy hadn't had a chance. And he had known what was coming, had trembled under the pressure of the barrel those last few seconds on his knees. He had held Clint's eyes to the end, a silent plea for help in them, but there hadn't been anything Clint could do. Not with his hands cuffed behind his back and one gun aimed at his head, another one at Tony.

He knew the odds that he was next in line were pretty good, knew that he might die here, by his own gun just like Jackson a few seconds ago. The only one with any value to their captors was Tony. But no matter if Clint lived or not, Cortes and his crew would be living on borrowed time. If Clint survived he would take care of it himself, for Jackson. If he died, he knew Natasha would find Cortes and end him. He took comfort in that.

"Take him away, Cortes said and motioned at Jackson.

Two of the four henchmen that had crowded into the room with Cortes grabbed the back of Jackson's jacket and dragged him out. A smeared trail of blood painted the raw concrete floor behind them, and Clint saw Tony's still hazy eyes get stuck on it. They'd shot him up with something to keep him quiet and pliable. Apparently they had thought Clint wasn't important enough to waste pharmaceuticals on, so he'd had to settle for a good old fashioned hit to the head.

Everything had happened so fast. That morning Clint had reluctantly agreed to work security at one of Tony's public appearances, because they had suddenly found themselves short-handed, and Tony had nagged him to come as his personal body guard. It hadn't been a big event, just a quick in and out with Tony doing a little schmoozing and shaking the hands of politicians and socialites to make sure they stayed aligned with his social and technological agenda for the city.

They had been ambushed in the subterranean hotel garage just as they were leaving, and everything had gone tits up. Clint remembered a blinding light and a boom, a flashbang probably, but he was hazy on how they had gotten to their present location. He was pretty sure they were still in the city, because it hadn't taken too long reach their destination.

They were underground. In the basement of some kind of industrial warehouse that looked like it was still operational. As they had been taken from the van, Clint had still been groggy and confused, but he had managed to file away what he'd seen, how they had gotten to this room, doors, windows, equipment, and any other little detail that could help them get away.

 _Out of the room, twenty steps straight ahead to another door, unlocked, through it and a direct left up the stairs. Sixteen steps. Good places for cover along the way._

Cortes, a small Latino guy in his fifties, had been in the room waiting for them, and as soon as the three of them had been escorted in he had launched into a heavily accented tirade that basically boiled down to 'capitalism is evil and Tony Stark is the devil.' He had stabbed his finger at Clint and Jackson, called them lapdogs of the bourgeoisie, class traitors, and didn't they know it was their moral duty to support the socialist revolution and liberate the proletariat.

Which apparently meant liberating Tony from a lot of his money.

Despite his mid-level office worker look, Clint had been wary of Cortes from the start, because there was a quality to his rant that bordered on fanaticism, and he knew from experience that such devotion made people dangerous. Cortes didn't look like he fit with the entourage, though, and Clint assumed he had hired the goons for this job. Probably promising them a percentage of the ransom, because Cortes sure as hell didn't look like he had the cash to pay off these guys.

Too bad for all of them that Tony had this philosophy on the subject: No ransoms. No exceptions.

He had long ago issued a standing order for Stark Industries to not pay a penny for him, come hell or stock market high water. Pepper had the same orders. How did Cortes not know this? It was a well-known fact - he wasn't exactly the first person who had tried to get money in exchange for Tony. And what the hell had he been smoking when he thought kidnapping Tony was a good idea in the first place? Hadn't Cortes heard of his pals, the Avengers?

Cortes had listened calmly to Tony's slightly slurred dismissal of his demands, then he had shrugged and made a motion at one of his men who had stepped up to Jackson, kneeling in the middle of the floor. Cortes had put his fingers in his ears and then Jackson had been dead.

Cortes straightened his tan sports jacket and started towards the door. "I will give you some time to decide if you want to change your mind or not," he told Tony.

"Boss?" the guy with the gun called after him. He was all but colorless, light blond hair, pale skin and pale eyes, Whippet lean, and Clint had disliked him with a passion even before he murdered Jackson.

Cortes glanced back over his shoulder. "He's all yours. Just make sure he's alive when you're done."

Clint's heart sank. They were going to work Tony over. He caught Tony glancing at him, clearly picking up on the same thing.

But it wasn't Tony who was grabbed and dragged to the middle of the floor, it was Clint. Once there, a boot connected with the back of his knee and he landed painfully in the exact position and spot that Jackson had died in. He realized he had been wrong. They _were_ going after Tony, but not by beating him up. Clint would be the emissary here, receiver of the pain that vicariously would hurt Tony almost as bad.

Whippet went to the narrow work table that ran the length of the opposite wall and put Jackson's Colt down. They had all been searched and stripped of weapons. He picked up Clint's H&K and peered along the sight for a few moments before lowering it and walking to stand in front of Clint. Clint had to crane his neck a little, but met his gaze coldly.

"You killed two of my men." Whippet held the gun in a relaxed grip by his side.

Clint gave a small, one-shoulder shrug. They attacked him, attacked Tony and Jackson, so yeah, he killed them.

"My cousins," Whippet growled, and in the moment before his fist struck, Clint suddenly realized that he had been double wrong. This wasn't about hurting him to hurt Tony. This wasn't about Tony at all. This right here was about hurting _him_. The blow almost knocked him over, but somehow he managed to stay on his knees. Tony shouted in protest.

Whippet shook his fist out. "I'm a firm believer in an eye for an eye," he told Clint, "and right now we're at two to one."

"Good on ya." Clint spat blood on the ground. "You know how to subtract single digit numbers."

"Straight A-student," Tony said, his voice a little uneven. "MIT material."

Without looking at him Whippet pointed his arm at Tony. "Shut him up."

Tony scrambled away from the two men who advanced on him, but even though he hadn't been restrained in any way, he was still too uncoordinated, too slow, and in seconds they had wrestled him to the ground. From the sound of it, he still managed to get a blow in, because one of them hissed. A second later Tony cried out in pain. He was cut off in mid-shout as something was stuffed into his mouth. They finished it off by wrapping several rounds of duct tape around his head to cover his mouth and keep whatever it was in place. As a finishing touch they duct taped his wrists together behind his back.

Whippet made a small movement with the gun, and Clint's attention zoomed back to it. He knew there was a full mag in there, minus those two bullets that had taken out Whippet's guys. His cousins, apparently.

Whippet thumbed the safety off and then the cold metal of the barrel touched Clint's forehead.

Tony shouted behind the gag.

Clint's world narrowed down to the gun and the bastard in front of him.

For a moment the gun didn't move, then is slowly started to slide lower. A bead of sweat trickled down his back. Shit. He didn't want Tony to have to watch this, didn't want him to have to live with having seen Clint's brain join the gore on the floor that Jackson had left behind. It would hurt him bad. Clint's heart pounded against his ribcage as the gun continued down. It slid down the length of his nose, passed lazily over the tip and came to rest against his lips. It smelled of recently fired ammunition.

Tony's shouts grew increasingly louder and more insistent.

Whippet's brows twitched. "Jesus Christ," he growled. "I'm gonna bash his head in if he doesn't shut up. Get him out of here."

 _Yes. Please. Get him out of here._

In seconds Tony was being dragged towards the door, shouting and struggling against his restraints. His face was red behind the gag. He managed to twist and look over his shoulder just as they hauled him out. There was fear in his eyes. Fear for Clint. A second later the heavy door closed between them.

Whippet looked back down at Clint with a grin, the gun still steadily pressed against Clint's lips. Little white buckshot-like scars covered his hands. He was missing a third of his little finger.

"If you want to live, I think you should kiss it," Whippet said and prodded him with the muzzle.

"I think you should kiss my ass," Clint gritted out through clenched teeth.

This time the fist knocked him right over. A remembered sigh whispered through his head. _Why do you always have to aggravate the guy with the gun, Barton?_

Whippet's two buddies hauled Clint up and put him back on his knees just as the door opened again and another two guys entered the room. New faces. At least seven people in the building, then. The two with Tony, Whippet and the three other guys in here, and Cortes. The newcomers joined the other guy by the wall. As the passed him, Clint could only see one gun, but he knew that more firearms were likely hiding under the bulky bomber jackets. Probably a couple of knives, too. They looked like the kind of people who snuggled up to their favorite serrated blade in bed and Clint didn't like the sense of dark excitement that rolled off them when they looked at him.

Whippet pressed the gun against his lips again, and the audience suddenly became a lot less important.

"Kiss it," Whippet repeated.

Fine. It would be a small price for staying alive for at least a little while, for giving the guys more time to find them. And besides, if their attention was focused on him, it wasn't on Tony. He leaned forward slowly and put his lips against the cool, black barrel, his eyes defiantly on Whippet. He stayed like that for two eternity-long seconds and worked very hard at ignoring the fact that his brain might paint the wall behind him at any moment.

"Oh, come on, you can do better than that," one of the guys called to him when he drew back.

Whippet seemed to agree, because he tapped the gun against Clint's lower lip. "That was pathetic. Come on, open up." When Clint didn't obey immediately, Whippet pressed the gun harder against his mouth, crushing it painfully against his lips. "Open up, or I will knock your teeth out with your own gun. I really don't give a fuck, but either way, it's going in."

"That's what she said," a voice snickered.

"That doesn't even make sense, idiot," someone else said.

Clint glared, but opened his mouth. Whippet pressed the gun in. He didn't push it far, just rested the tip of the barrel on Clint's teeth.

"He looks like he a natural."

"Probably sucks cock every chance he gets. Must be why they keep him around."

Long seconds passed and nothing happened. Everything felt amplified; the pulse that thundered in his ears, the concrete floor under his knees, the thick smell of blood and death in the cold air. He curled his hands into fists behind his back and tried to breathe around the gun. He needed to stay calm, needed to keep his head cool and clear.

But that was easier said than done when there was a gun in his mouth and he had just watched Jackson get his head blown off. He closed his eye, but Whippet tapped his cheek with the hand not holding the gun.

"Eyes on me at all times. Understand?"

Clint opened his eyes and nodded, more with his eyes than his head. He didn't want to jostle the gun. Yes, he understood; he understood that Whippet was all about control and humiliation and fear. He itched to glance down to see if Whippet's finger rested on the trigger guard, or if it was actually on the trigger, but he wasn't about to get himself in trouble by looking away two seconds after being ordered not to. He heard the door behind him open and close, and from the sounds he figured another two or three people had entered the room. They stayed behind him, out of his field of vision.

Then Whippet started to slide the gun along Clint's teeth, from side to side. He hadn't explicitly demanded eye-contact, so Clint focused on the point between his eyes where he would put a bullet if he had had the man in his rifle sight.

Whippet kept moving the gun back and forth. For a long while he did nothing else, and Clint eventually had to swallow, or drool all over himself. He did his best to minimize contact with the gun in his mouth as he did, but the barrel was big and unwieldy in his mouth.

Then Whippet pushed the gun deeper, and the iron sight scratched painfully against the roof of Clint's mouth. "Suck it properly."

The barrel tasted like oil and bitter propellant on his tongue.

"Let us see you lick it!" someone shouted.

Whippet wiggled the gun slightly in his mouth. "You heard the man."

It was awkward and difficult to get his tongue to move along barrel in his mouth, but he managed.

"Come on! Give us a real show, sweetheart."

 _I'll give you a show, fucker. As soon as I'm out of these goddamn cuffs and Tony is safe, I'll give you one hell of a show._

"Yes, put some feeling into it," Whippet instructed, his eyes darkly amused.

"Fuck his face with it!"

Encouragement was heard from the rest of the bystanders, and Whippet started moving the barrel in and out. Clint made a noise of protest when the sight scraped against his palate again and the taste of blood filled his mouth. He turned his head to the side, away from the intruding object. Whippet's fingers grabbed his hair and pressed the gun against his lips again. Clint reluctantly opened his mouth again.

"It's a nice gun," Whippet said conversationally. His eyes were glued to the gun moving in and out of Clint's mouth again. "Good balance."

 _It's a goddamn awesome gun. How about I show you just how awesome it is?_

The metal ridges on the underside of the barrel knocked against Clint's teeth as the gun was pushed deeper. Fuck. The sight was tearing him up. The gun went deeper still, and he gagged.

"Aw. Can't take it?" someone laughed from Clint's left.

"Bet those pussies you hang out with don't have anything bigger than a pinkie."

From the corner of his eye Clint saw that they were moving closer, forming a half circle around the two of them. He carefully kept his eyes on Whippet, who was looking like he was thoroughly enjoying himself. His cousins were just a convenient excuse for this bastard. A justification.

"Such a pretty mouth," Whippet smiled. After a final thrust he pulled the gun out. The metal glistened with saliva, and Clint spat on the floor. He hit Whippet's shoes.

A moment later a steel-toed boot connected with Clint's groin and his world whited out with pain. He doubled over as it wrapped around him, deep, hot and all-encompassing. The pain spread up his spine and radiated down the insides of his thighs, and a heavy rock of nausea had suddenly formed in his stomach. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Agony didn't begin to cover it. Hands grabbed him and pulled him up to his knees, forced him to straighten despite the cramp-like burning. Another kick landed, and he hung dry heaving in their grip, struggling to breathe.

"That was for my cousins, asshole." Whippet grabbed an extendable baton from the back of his belt and snapped it into full length with a flick of his wrist. He crouched down in front of Clint and waved the baton slowly in front of his eyes.

"And so is this."

Clint tried to pull back, but he was held in place, and the baton pressed against his groin. A'click' was heard and his muscles seized violently and painfully. Loud curses registered distantly and the hands on him let go as the electricity zapped them, too. Clint dropped to the floor, muscles useless and locked, mouth open on a cry that couldn't squeeze past the crushing tightness. When the current stopped he curled up on the floor with a moan.

"Go get Babbit," he heard Whippet say. "He'll want a piece of this. And you two, get the table."

Clint caught the movement of the baton coming down again, and he tried to roll away, but it struck his arm just below the elbow, and he cried out. A one second flash of white noise-numbness skittered down his fingers. On its heels came the kind of pain that spoke of deep tissue damage, but it wasn't the kind he associated with broken bones, and thank god for that, it would have made life a lot more difficult than it already was. Whippet swung the baton again. The shoulder this time. Before Clint could recover, someone grabbed his ankles and he was dragged along the rough concrete floor on his front. Barefoot kicking wasn't quite as effective as kicking with combat boots, but despite the pain that shot up from his groin he managed to get a pretty decent hit in. His ankles were released.

"Son of a fucking bitch," someone groaned behind him, presumably the receiver of the kick.

The baton came down again, and Clint curled up, chin and knees close to his chest. With his hands still cuffed behind his back, there wasn't much else he could do to protect himself.


	2. Chapter 2

== chapter contains graphic non-con ==

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Clint was hauled to his feet and groaned as the pain flared up again. Someone behind him grabbed his cuffed hands and lifted his arms towards the ceiling. The strain on his shoulder joints went from uncomfortable to painful in no time at all, and as his hands went higher he had to lean forward to take some of the pressure off.

"Look at him, so eager to bend over," someone snickered.

The table had been positioned in the middle of the room, and Clint was frog marched to it. A shove in the back sent him stumbling the last few steps, and his sore midsection hit the edge hard. His arms were lifted a little higher, and only when his chest was pressed flat against the table did the pressure ease up some. A kick forced his left foot to the side, and he felt it being secured to the sturdy leg of the table. His right foot got the same treatment. He was now bent over with his legs spread and ass on display, and shit, this couldn't possibly mean anything good. He had a fleeting thought that Cortes probably didn't have a health care policy that offered STD testing.

His hands were finally lowered, and Clint was grateful. It was an effective way to dislocate someone's shoulders, and he really didn't want to experience that right now. But his relief was short-lived, because the next second his hands were forced up painfully between his shoulder blades. A loop of rough rope was draped across his throat and pulled behind him. A second later it tightened, and Clint's chest clenched. He did _not_ like ropes anywhere near his throat. A grunt escaped him as his hands were forced even higher up his back. Dislocation was probably off the table for now, but in his new position he'd instead fracture something if they pushed too far.

Then the hands on his arms disappeared and he tried to lower his hands into a slightly less uncomfortable position, but he aborted it immediately as the rope tightened harshly across his throat. Fuck. He arched his back and lifted his head to get some slack on the rope. They must have tied it to his cuffs, leaving just enough length to force him to work at keeping his hands in a position where he didn't suffocate himself. It was hard, and even when he held his hands as high as he could, the rope was still tight across his throat. He swallowed uncomfortably against the rope. Stress positions with breath play elements. This was going to get real nasty.

Suddenly a stripe of pain burned across his lower back, and his body instinctively surged forward in an attempt at getting away from it. Clint made a choked sound as his air was cut off, and he struggled to get back into position. More pain exploded in the same spot and he jerked forward again. The baton. It had to be the fucking baton. Silver linings, he tried to remind himself. At least it wasn't delivering shocks. Silver linings.

Someone stepped in between his legs and draped himself over his back. The weight pressed Clint painfully against the table, putting pressure on his already aching shoulders. He had to clench his teeth to keep the huff of discomfort inside.

"I'm gonna enjoy making you scream," Whippet hissed next to his ear.

"Made your momma scream last night," Clint said hoarsely.

Clint felt Whippet's hands force their way into the limited space between his body and the table, and the button and zipper of his pants were wrenched open. He didn't fight it, _couldn't_ fight it, he was trussed up like a fucking turkey, ready to be carved. His pants were yanked down, along with his underwear. With his legs spread and ankles tied to the legs of the table, they wouldn't go further than the middle of his thighs.

"Untie his leg," Whippet ordered. To Clint he said, "move and I will cut your balls clean off."

Clint right foot was freed. Then his pants and underwear were pulled all the way down and off, leaving them pooling around his other, still restrained foot. Clint didn't move, just concentrated on breathing in through his nose, out through his mouth. This was going to happen, there was no doubt about it any longer, and he just needed to make sure he didn't get more injured than absolutely necessary. If he survived this he needed to be in good enough shape to get them both out of here.

Cold hands grabbed his ankle and zip tied it to the table again. He heard people talking and laughing behind him, and he wondered if more people had entered while he had been busy deep-throating his gun. It sounded like a fucking cocktail party.

Then he heard a snick of a knife opening, and he steeled himself for the sharp, bright pain of a blade. But it didn't come, instead he felt cold metal slide up along the inside of his calf. There was hardly any pressure, just the slow slide of the blade against his skin. The knife reached the thin skin at the back of his knee, and he startled at the sharp pinpoint of pain lit up his nerves. People laughed. He realized Whippet must have pressed the tip of it the knife into his skin. The discomfort was nothing in the grand scheme of things, but there was a blade behind that pinprick, a blade that could cause much more damage, and Clint had no desire to get too acquainted with it.

Whippet continued sliding the blade up slowly, zigzagging a little, and stopping every now and again to dig into Clint's skin. He kept going up. And up. Shit, Clint didn't want that knife anywhere near his balls. He heard Whippet hum under his breath as the knife continued up, and without really meaning to he rose on his toes, trying to get as far away from the blade as his restraints would allow him.

"I wonder," Whippet said, "what would happen if I did… this."

The tip dug cruelly into Clint's balls and he moved without conscious thought. He threw himself forward, but the restraints meant he got nowhere. The only thing he managed was putting more tension on the rope.

"Fuck him with this," someone shouted and a chorus of encouragement was heard.

Clint had no idea what 'this' was, but he was sure it wasn't something he would enjoy.

He was right. Whippet stepped away, and with the knife no longer at his balls Clint felt like he could breathe again. Then Whippet came around to the front and fisted his fingers in Clint's hair. He held up a sturdy, black nightstick.

"How about I shove this up your ass? Hmm?"

"I'm a little old for you, ain't I?" Clint looked at him from the very corner of his eye. He couldn't twist his head enough to look him straight in the face. "Elementary school seems more your deal. Hairless little bo—"

Whippet slammed Clint's face into the table, and the rope dealt its dual pain again.

"Watch your mouth, faggot."

Clint spat the fresh blood from his mouth. "I'm not the one playing with another man's balls."

Shrieks of laughter were heard from the rest of the gang, and Whippet slammed Clint's head down again with a sound of rage. Warm blood from Clint's busted nose started running down his chin.

Whippet dropped Clint's head and rounded the table, disappearing behind him. A moment later Clint felt the nightstick stab painfully at his asshole as Whippet tried to force it in. Shit. Getting that thing shoved up his ass dry would make him rip like paper. People were moving closer. He couldn't see them, but he could hear them. On the third attempt Whippet found the mark, and Clint couldn't contain a sharp sound as the nightstick pushed inside. The small crowd jeered and applauded, and Clint felt someone's hands on his ass, holding him open. Whippet shoved the nightstick deeper, and fuckfuckfuck, it hurt like a bitch. It caught on the sensitive skin as Whippet pulled it out again, and the cruel catching and pulling of skin made Clint cry out again. He remembered the advice Shield doled out in various classes. If it can't be avoided, stand down. Don't fight it. Don't tense up if you can help it, it will only make it hurt worse. Well, whoever thought you could relax when being fucked dry with a nightstick obviously hadn't had first-hand experience. He clenched his fingers into fists behind his back

Then something else pressed against his ass, and pain flared brighter when it forced its way inside along the nightstick. It was like sandpaper, low-grit, desert dry sandpaper, and he was sure he bleeding now. It was getting hard to remember to keep his head up when all his body wanted to do was to move away from the pain. Whippet forced the nightstick in another two cruel inches and another burst of clapping and cheering was heard when Clint cried out again. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to contain the trembles throughout his body that were growing into shaking.

"Fuck, you're tight," a new voice said from behind, and Clint suddenly realized the thing in him was a finger.

"Good thing we have time to stretch you a little," Whippet said and pulled the nightstick out almost all the way, then shoved it back in. He twisted it painfully. "I mean, we don't want to hurt you. We're not animals, after all."

"Go fuck a ferret," Clint ground out. The finger did something that made him sure he was being gutted from the inside.

"Oh, I _like_ that sound," Finger man said, and did it again.

"You'll hear more of it," Whippet promised. "I'm gonna fuck him up real good. For Freddy and Castor." Clint heard the sound of a zipper and the rustle of clothes.

Okay, so the main show was coming up.

"Hey, there's a hose here," someone said, and water started to run somewhere. "Wanna clean 'im out? Fill 'im up so full he looks fucking pregnant?" Clint twitched as a splash of cold water landed on his back. A few in the posse cursed at whoever was holding the hose.

"You wanna play those kinds of fucked up games, you're doing it after I'm gone."

Clint heard the crinkle of foil and spared a fleeting thought of gratitude that Whippet wasn't going to fuck him bareback. Not counting the upside of avoiding STDs, the small amount of slick on the condom would probably help at least a little tiny bit, because his cock would be so much worse than the nightstick.

The finger withdrew from Clint's body. It was just as painful going out as it had been going in and he sucked in a sharp breath. Jesus. This was just the beginning and he already hurt so fucking bad. Whippet pumped the nightstick a few more vicious times, then pulled it out, and Clint heard it clatter to the ground across the room.

Before the burn had subsided, Whippet's cock pressed against his ass and he filled his lungs in a deep and very deliberate inhalation. Breathe. Breathe through it. The cock felt huge and hot against his asshole, and fuck, this was going to hurt like a motherfucker. Whippet lined himself up and pressed forward. As his cock overcame the initial resistance, Clint forgot all about breathing deeply and evenly and he cried out.

"Told you I was gonna make you scream."

Whippet grabbed his cuffed wrists and pulled them towards himself, forcing Clint to arch his back to try to keep the rope from tensing up too much. He drew a thick, raspy breath, struggling for air as Whippet continued to fuck into him. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to focus on the bite of metal against his wrists, on the gritty concrete floor under his feet, on the dank smell of motor oil and old, rusty machinery. He cast around for _anything_ to concentrate on, other than the burn in his lungs and the pain that gripped at his insides with razor claws.

Whippet pushed in deep, then pulled out completely, only to shove back in. Again and again and again, and Clint rocked forward with every thrust, his breath wheezing and his hips digging painfully into the rough edge of the table. Whippet finally let go of his cuffs, thank god, and Clint almost choked on the huge gulps of air his lungs demanded.

Whippet leaned over his back as he pounded into Clint's body. "You like this, don't you?"

Clint flipped him off behind his back with both hands, but even that little movement was agony. His shoulders were on fire, stretched to their very limit. His neck and arms and core muscles were already hurting from the prolonged strain of holding his hands as far up his back as he could and keeping his head tilted back. There would come a point in the not too distant future when he wouldn't be able to maintain the position, and then he'd choke himself out. Maybe that was Whippet's plan. Fucking Clint while he choked himself to death. Snuff movie in the making, he thought, unreasonably and illogically giggly for a moment.

Whippet kept moving inside him. There was no getting used to it, no adjustment to make it easier, it just hurt, deep and horrible as his insides protested the violent intrusion. Cold sweat alternated with waves of sickly heat across his skin, and with every thrust, Clint's breath was forced out of him. Then the pain went from bad to fucking blinding as Whippet's fingers closed like a vise around his balls. The crowd cheered as he screamed and struggled against the bonds. The few brain cells that weren't busy howling with pain whispered that maybe choking himself out would be preferable to this. Whippet gave one last, cruel squeeze, before letting go and Clint sobbed with relief, even as the man kept fucking him.

By now his muscles were trembling with the effort of keeping the rope from tightening. It didn't take many minutes before he could only hold the difficult position for a few seconds at a time. From outside his narrow little circle of pain, he could hear what sounded like bottles clinking and a betting pool being set up, but the voices were quickly becoming irrelevant, because he was strangling himself slowly.

He tried desperately to lessen the pressure over his throat, but he couldn't. His lungs started burning and true panic was just starting to build inside when the rope suddenly fell away. Clint collapsed forward, coughing and panting hoarsely, finally able to rest his cheek against the table and let his hands slide down his back.

"What the fuck?" he heard Whippet ask. He sounded pissed off.

"Didn't want him passing out and missing all the fun that's lined up," Finger guy said. "He was starting to look a little blue."

The sound of the door opening and closing was heard.

"This him?" someone asked.

"Yep. Pretty enough for you, Babbit?"

A hand fisted in Clint's hair and lifted his head again, tilting it sharply up, and another man looked down at him. Older, dirtier, and with a beer belly spilling over his belt. The guy grinned down at him, showing a black gap where a front tooth should be.

"He's got a real pretty mouth. I think I'm gonna fuck it." He spoke with a thick Virginia twang that Clint suspected came from generations of inbreeding and militia isolation.

"Shocker," someone snorted.

"Babbit, you'd fuck a pencil sharpener if you could get your dick in."

A mix of laughter and wincing was heard.

Two of Babbit's fingers pressed against Clint's lips, and fuck that, he wasn't taking anything in his mouth. He tried to bite, but Babbit was too quick and golden sparks flared before Clint's eyes as Babbit punched him hard. The man grabbed Clint's chin tightly and forced his head back up. As he smiled down, all dark and mean as a junk yard dog, Clint realized that as bad as things had been this far, his trouble had probably just multiplied by ten.

"Let's try this again, Purdy," Babbit said. "You gonna open yer mouth. I even feel teeth, your friend will regret it. Lots of ways to hurt someone and not kill 'em, you know."

Clint glared up at him. Yes, there sure were, and he was intimately familiar with a whole lot of them. So would these guys be if Clint got his hands on them.

"Gonna bite?"

Clint glowered and shook his head.

"Good boy," Babbit grinned. "Now, open up."

For the second time that day, Clint found himself with shit stuffed into his mouth. But at least it wasn't the asshole's cock, like he had promised. The two fingers that pressed into his mouth were dirty, streaked with what looked like oil and rust. There were black crescents under the nails, and Clint tried to not think too much about where those hands might have been as Babbit rubbed the pads of his fingers against Clint's tongue.

Babbit kept them there for a few seconds, moved them back and forth, then he pushed deeper. Clint winced as the nails scraped painfully against the tender back of his throat, but Babbit didn't stop until his knuckles were pressed against Clint's lips. For a moment Clint managed to suppress the urge to retch and pull away, because Tony would be the one to pay for any disobedience, not him. But then Babbit curled his fingers, and suddenly it was too much, too deep, and he gagged violently, his body seizing up as it attempted to expel the foreign object. The tightening of his muscles sent another jolt of pain down his spine and ass, and Clint's muffled cry mixed with a groan from Whippet. He coughed and pulled away from the fingers, blinking against the tears that the retching had triggered. A hand in his hair prevented him from getting very far.

"Don't you pull back, boy. Keep 'em in there."

"Do that again," Whippet demanded hoarsely. "Made him tighten up real nice."

Babbit laughed. "I know. Makes the loosest whore feel like a fourteen year-old virgin."

"Until they lose the puke reflex," someone chuckled.

Babbit pressed his fingers against Clint's lips again, and Clint wanted with all his heart to turn away and refuse, wanted to bite his goddamn fingers off, but he needed to keep Tony safe, so he swallowed thickly and reluctantly opened his mouth after a few seconds of silent defiance. He made a sound of protest as the fingers went deep again, and Babbit's knuckles wedged his mouth open so wide Clint thought for a moment his jaw was going to break. This time, his gag reflex was already awake and on alert, and forcing it into submission, even for a few second, was impossible. Whippet groaned, long and loud as Clint's stomach twisted sharply and he gagged on Babbit's fingers again. God, the sick fuck was going to make him to puke.

But Babbit pulled out a little again and let Clint cough wetly around the fingers for a moment. Saliva ran down his chin. Clint only got a few seconds of respite the fingers went deep again, and this time Babbit didn't let up. For the next stretch of eternity he pulled string after string of ugly, choking sounds out of Clint, his body clenching involuntarily, _painfully_ around Whippet's cock. Then his body decided that enough was enough, and Clint squeezed his eyes shut. A few disgusted groans and leering cat calls rose from the on-lookers as vomit forced its way past the fingers lodged in his aching throat and dribbled down his chin onto the table, mixing with the blood there. He coughed and shuddered, and viciously hoped they were sympathetic pukers, the whole fucking lot of them.

"Yeah, that's it," he heard Whippet rasp as the man increased the force behind his thrusts, driving Clint forward onto the punishing fingers. "Again."

Any hope he had that Babbit would be put off by the puke that coated his hand and wrist died when he started fucking Clint's throat with his fingers again. The front of his dirty pants was tented. Sick fucking fuck. Clint was going to gut this guy, was going to make him eat his own entrails. Another rush of vomit rushed up his throat and splattered down onto the table. More this time. Babbits fist connected painfully with his ear.

"Watch the teeth."

Babbit kept finger-fucking Clint's increasingly raw throat, and eventually Whippet's breath started getting harsh. Babbit's other hand was moving inside his pants. Whippet's nails dug deep into Clint's skin as he grunted and finally gave a few vicious, deep thrusts and stopped moving, buried balls-deep in Clint's ass.

Cheers and the sound of bottles knocked against each other were heard. "One down, four to go," someone said.

"Fuck," Whippet gasped behind Clint.

Babbit stopped moving his fingers, but didn't remove them until Whippet pulled out of Clint.

"Good boy." Babbit said and wiped the mess that coated them across Clint's cheek before he rounded the table, disappearing out of view behind Clint.

Someone gripped the back of Clint's neck and pushed his face down. Ugh. Fuck. Clint closed his eyes and turned his head away from the mess below him, but there wasn't much he could do to stop the guy from pressing the side of his face into the still warm vomit. He was held there for a few seconds, then the man let go. Clint twisted his head and tried to wipe his cheek against his shoulder, tried to get the foul-tasting stuff from his lips, but he couldn't reach.

The room went quiet, and nasty anticipation was thick in the air. There was no sound of foil ripping, just a chink-clink of a belt being undone and the rustle of clothes. Clint looked over his shoulder just in time to see Babbit step into the spot between his legs that Whippet had just left, cock in hand. From behind, the hiss of a beer bottle being opened was heard.

"Shit, you're hung like a fucking horse," someone called out with awe in his voice.

Babbit started pushing inside, and Clint gritted his teeth against the pressure that grew and grew with every second. Fuck. His fingers curled into fists behind his back. Whippet had been bad, but this bastard was bigger, _a lot_ bigger, and even though the condom hadn't felt like it eased the way much, it _had_ helped, he realized. His breath hitched on a cry as he felt skin tearing around the cock that Babbit was pressing into his reluctant body. A deep tremble was starting up in his legs, spreading through his body. Then Babbit suddenly pushed deep, and Clint screamed as the pain escalated sharply into something larger and deeper and much more terrible. He twisted against the cuffs.

"Tight little whore, this one," Babbit growled and started moving in earnest.

A warm trickle ran down Clint's leg. He was bleeding. How badly? Was he bleeding inside, too? He reached desperately behind him to push Babbit away (get off get off get _off_ ) but he couldn't reach, his fingertips skimmed uselessly against the front of the man's shirt. He squeezed his eyes shut as Babbit fucked into him. This was agony, this was what Whippet had felt like times infinity, and there was no way he could keep the near continuous sounds of pain inside.

He hoped Tony didn't have to listen.

"He got even tighter when you finger fucked his throat," Whippet laughed, still a little breathless.

Babbit leaned over Clint's back, trapping his arms painfully between their bodies. "Come on, darlin'," he drawled. His filthy fingers came around from behind, pressing into Clint's mouth again. "Show Daddy what you can do."


	3. Chapter 3

The images in Tony's mind wouldn't go away. Jackson alive. Then Jackson dead. Then Clint on his knees with a gun in his mouth.

Tony hadn't heard a gunshot. He clung to that, but he knew he was at the other end of this huge building, and he had no idea how thick the walls were between him and Clint. For all he knew Clint may be lying dead on the floor back there, his blood and brains mixing with Jackson's. Tony rubbed at his eyes. No. Stop. He hadn't heard a gunshot, and until he saw Clint's body, he wasn't going to entertain that nightmarish idea.

But it was hard to convince his overactive brain of that, because the dull sound of Jackson hitting the ground was still so clear, and his head kept playing what-if reels of Clint's body doing the same.

He leaned the back of his head against the wall and stared at the cracked ceiling. It was plain and gray, but so much better than looking at Jackson's blanket covered body. The man had already been sprawled out in the middle of the room when they shoved Tony in here. Tony had knelt next to him, hoping futilely that the man would somehow magically still be alive. His hands had shaken when he reached out to feel for a pulse. Jackson's skin had still been warm, but there had been no beat of a heart under his fingers. Tony knew it had been a stupid thing to hope for, the ruined back of Jackson's head should have been enough to know that, but he couldn't _not_ make sure.

He had dragged Jackson from the middle of the room to one of the walls, and tried to arrange him in a position that looked somewhat comfortable. Not that it mattered one bit to the man in question, but it made Tony uncomfortable to see him with his limp limbs awkwardly angled. Then he had taken the single blanket from the cot at the other wall and draped it over Jackson, before retreating back to the cot. He had buried his head in his hands for a few minutes, then decided he needed to get his shit together, because he had to get them the fuck out of here. This wasn't like that time he had been snatched by that pimply Spin Doctor wannabe all those years ago. Tony blamed Happy for dropping the ball on that one, but in the end it hadn't mattered much, because not ten minutes after said wannabe had shoved Tony into his stinky basement apartment he had lit up a massive roach and said a temporary goodbye to most of his brain. Tony had been back home within the hour. And this also wasn't like the time when this batty old bint had her daughter lure Tony into a freaking storage container. It had looked bad there for a while. Hacksaw and power drill bad. But that kidnapping had ended well, too. With crumpets and tea in dainty thin-walled china cups when the old lady had decided that Tony was too nice a young man to cut body parts off. Batshit crazy, that one. Her kitty litter-for-brains offspring, too.

No, this was very much not like those two times, so after a few minutes on the cot, Tony had gotten to his feet and examined the room for ways out, and when that failed, for material he could use to _make_ a way out. But there had been nothing. The room had the cot, bolted to the floor, a plastic bucket in the corner and the blanket that now covered Jackson. Nothing else. No gas pipes, no electrical outlets, no parts that could be pried loose and used for weapons. Nothing.

He rubbed at the spot on the side of his neck where they had pressed the jet injector. He had already been disoriented by the concussion grenade that had gone off, and it had taken no more than a few seconds before Tony's brain couldn't tell up from down. He had heard the sound of gunshots, but the world around him had already been demoted to something fairly unimportant by the drugs, and he can't remember what happened next. Not until he had come to sitting on the floor next to Clint and Jackson, listening to that mad man going on and on and on about the evils of materialism and the despicable concentration of riches belonging to a few equally despicable men who were pretty much the devil in disguise.

There had been some weird mix of old testament wrath and Marxist-Leninist preaching in this guy's spiel, which had amused Tony's drug-addled brain a little, because hello, he apparently didn't know enough about his chosen ideology to know that religion didn't really mesh with it. Tony had taken a lot of pleasure in pointing out all the contradictory aspects of his speech, albeit a little slurred and probably not quite as witty and cutting as usual because of the drugs, but it had been fun. Clint hadn't looked all that amused, though. Neither had Jackson. Then Tony had gone on to inform Lenin-in-training that he would get no money, none whatsoever, and things had gone to hell in a bad way. Jackson had been dragged to his knees, and without any other comment Lenin's lead thug had put a bullet through his head. Tony's world had come into sharp, horrible focus at the sound of the gun. Jackson's body had been dragged out, and Lenin, who's name apparently was Cortes, had told Tony to think about his answer. The man had then bid his adieu, but not before something wordless had been communicated between him and the murderous lead thug.

The door had barely closed when Clint had been grabbed and shoved to his knees in the middle of the room. Tony's heart had stuttered when the guy put the gun against Clint's forehead. He thinks he might have gotten loud at that point, because he had been unceremoniously gagged with duct tape and his hands had been taped together behind his back. His heartbeat had been going crazy as he had been forced to watch the gun slide down Clint's face before it came to a stop against his lips. Clint's face didn't betray much, but his hands were clenched into fists behind his back, and the tension in his body made him look like he was made from stone. He hadn't even glanced at Tony, not once, instead he had turned every ounce of focus on the thug, radiating waves of closely controlled rage and defiance.

Then Tony had been dismissed and forcefully removed from the room. He had managed to catch Clint's eyes for just a moment before the door closed, and they had betrayed no fear, just a hardness that Tony had only seen on a few occasions when shit hit the fan in a big way and Clint pulled out his Shield persona, the one who had spent years and years doing things that Tony didn't even want to think about. The one he had a hard time consolidating with the Clint Barton he knew. If Jackson being shot in the head hadn't told Tony something about the depth of shit they were in, then the sight of Barton in that mode would have made it clear all on its own.

Tony flexed his hands, ran his fingers over the raw knuckles. He had pounded at the door periodically, shouting and raging, but no one had acknowledged him. Without his watch he didn't know exactly how much time had passed since he was put in this room, but he was pretty good at judging the passage of time, and he guessed about an hour had passed when he heard sounds outside the door again.

He got to his feet and steeled himself.

The door opened. It was the man who had shot Jackson, who had pushed the gun to Clint's mouth. The colorless one. Behind him, further down the hallway, two other men dragged Clint between them. He was bent over in their grips, half-dragged every few steps when he couldn't keep up with their preferred pace.

Thank god. Thank god. _Thank god._

When they came to a stop, Clint raised his head a fraction, squinting. Blood had run from his nose and his mouth. One side of his face was darkening with bruises and swelling.

The colorless guy motioned towards the small procession behind him, just outside the door. "Is this yours?" He pointed at Clint with a nightstick.

They dropped Clint to his knees and he fell forward with a groan. His hands were still cuffed behind his back. Tony took a step forward, but reconsidered when the nightstick was raised over Clint's head.

"This yours? Your whore?" the guy asked again.

 _What the fuck?_

Tony glared at him. A second later the nightstick came down on Clint's back. Clint twitched away with a low, sharp sound of pain. It struck again.

"Stop!" Tony shouted as the nightstick went high again. "Don't."

"Is. He. Your. Whore?"

"He sure took it like one," one of the other guys said with a smirk. "Spread so prettily, opened right up. And he made these cute little noises, too, like..." he made a high-pitched, whimpering sound at the back of his throat. His companion snickered.

"You utter fucking bastards," Tony ground out.

"You sure he's not one of yours?" the door guy asked again. "You keep a few rentals around at all times, right?"

Despite the ice in his gut, Tony managed a roll of his eyes. "Piece of advice, buddy? Put down the gossip rags and pick up a brain. I don't keep a fucking harem stashed away in the laundry room."

"So, the answer is no?"

"Damn right it's a no! He's a better man than you could ever hope to be. And he's not mine or anyone else's. He's not a piece of property."

"You sure?"

"Are you stupid as well as ugly?" Tony snapped, and belatedly bit his tongue. He didn't want Clint to be beaten with that nasty-looking stick again.

But the guy just shrugged casually, like 'your loss', then looked over his shoulder at the other two. "Take him away."

Clint groaned as they grabbed his still cuffed arms and dragged him back down the corridor, not bothering to get him to his feet.

"No! Wait." Tony took two steps after them, but Clrless grabbed him and swung him around. Tony's face hit the wall with enough force to make the world blink out for a moment. The next thing he knew, he was on the floor and the door closed with a heavy bang. He blinked at the ceiling a few times as the room came back into focus. Shit. They took him away again.

He rolled gracelessly to his feet and stumbled to the door. "Wait!" He pounded his fists against it. "He's mine! He's mine. There, I said it. Now bring him back, you assholes!"

He got no reply.

He kept yelling, but got no reply. Eventually he sagged against the locked door. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_. What did he just do? Jesus. What did he _do_? He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to control the panic that was growing. He had given them a reason to take Clint away again, to maybe continue to do horrible, painful, degrading things to him, and all because Tony wouldn't say he was a whore, wouldn't say he was _Tony's_ whore. What the hell was wrong with him? They were just words, for god's sake. He slumped down onto the floor and covered his face with his hands.

But self-hatred never helped anyone escape sadistic dickheads, so after a few minutes he made himself get to his feet. He did another round of the room, avoiding the stretch of wall where Jackson lay, but he didn't find anything useful this time either. With nothing else to do, he returned to the cot and waited.

No gunshots were heard, and he clung to that.

'* '* '*

They returned later. Much later. Just like last time, the door was unlocked and Clint was dragged to the threshold. Tony clenched his teeth hard at how much worse he looked this time. He was paler, hardly holding any of his own weight, dripping wet and shivering in their grip. He looked like hell, but what scared Tony the most was the way that dark, dangerous flatness in his eyes had lost two very important components. The dark and the dangerous. Left behind was only a different kind of flatness that carried an exhausted note, an 'I'm not really here, please call back later' quality that made Tony's skin tingle with wrongness. Then Clint's head lolled forwards as they jostled him, and Tony couldn't see his eyes anymore.

"What the hell is wrong with you," he yelled. Every cell in his body wanted to cross the room and grab Clint, but there was no way in hell he was going to do anything that would make them take him away again. "What did you do to him?"

Colorless glanced down at Clint. "Cleaned him up a little. You should thank us, he was kinda disgusting."

"I'm going to kill you," Tony promised darkly, never taking his eyes off Clint, willing him to move, to make a sound, any sound. "And I will enjoy every goddamn second of it."

"Okay. Good luck with that." The guy seemed utterly indifferent to Tony's venom. "So, just to make sure I didn't misunderstand you last time, this _isn't_ your whore?"

Tony knew he had to say it. It didn't mean a thing, it was just mind-fuckery, but his whole body resisted those words, resisted attaching them to Clint no matter how insincere they were.

"Guess I heard you right, then." The guy made a move as if to turn.

"No! Wait!" Tony raised his hand, his chest tight and cold. He couldn't let them take Clint away again. Couldn't let them hurt him again. "Okay, fine, he's my— He's mine."

"I'm sorry, he's your what?"

Fuckers.

"My whore," Tony said, and the word tasted foul in his mouth. In that moment he was grateful he couldn't see Clint's eyes.

Colorless grinned widely, clearly satisfied with the result. "Well, why didn't you say that right away? Would you like him back?" He made a sweeping gesture towards Clint.

"Yes."

"Ask for it properly."

Tony fisted his hands by his sides. "Please, can I have him back?"

"I don't think that's the right question," Colorless said and turned to his companions. "Do you think that's the right question?"

"No," one said.

"Nope," the other said.

Clint hung between them, knees almost touching the floor. He had gone limp and silent during the exchange. The only sound heard was the drops of water hitting the dirty floor under him. Tony took a steadying breath and tried to control the anger that burned white hot in him. He knew what this motherfucker wanted to hear, he wasn't stupid. Didn't make it any easier to say, though.

"Please, give me back my whore."

He hoped Clint was coherent enough to recognize the game they were making Tony play. Either that or incoherent enough to not register anything at all.

"You hear that?" one of them asked Clint. "Your boss wants his whore back."

"I'm gonna miss him," the other said, and Tony took a couple of extra mental snap shots of his face, because this shit was going to die, too. If he couldn't do it himself, he would let Natasha in on his plans and the reasons for them, and he knew she would disappear. She would come back a while later, a few days, a few weeks.

They wouldn't.

"Of course you can have your whore back," said the door guy.

He looked ever so pleased, and Tony wanted to remove that goddamn smirk from his face. With a blow torch. Or possibly by shoving it into a wood chipper. Something that involved a lot of screaming and bleeding. He took a break from planning their messy demises when they dumped Clint just inside the door and unlocked his cuffs.

Tony was on his knees next go Clint before the door closed behind them, his hands hovering uncertainly above Clint's back, not sure if he should touch, or if he should, if he should… if he should _something_. He didn't know what that something would be, but he couldn't just let Clint lie here and shiver. Then Clint moaned quietly and shifted a fraction. He crossed his arms tightly over his chest, squeezing his eyes closed. His teeth were chattering.

Tony hesitantly placed his hand on Clint's wet, cold arm, careful of the ugly bruising on his skin. "Hey, man," he said quietly. "Hey. You in there?"

Clint didn't answer, just kept trembling under Tony's hand.

Tony gave him a shake, just a tiny little one to try to get his attention. "Barton? Hello? Wakey, wakey. You're missing all the fun." He winced and closed his eyes with disgust. He was _such_ an idiot. Clint probably had all the 'fun' he could take today.

Clint made no attempt to answer, and Tony checked him over quickly. No obviously deformed bones or compound fractures. There were plenty of bruising on just about every visible patch of skin, but most of the blood had been washed off, and only a few small cuts still seeped red. With Clint's wet, black clothes it was hard to see if there was any bleeding happening under them, and there may very well be if they… Shit. Tony rubbed at his eyes and prayed so very hard that the assholes had just been fucking around, been lying about hurting Clint like that just to scare him. That they hadn't put Clint through that.

He tried again.

"Listen, I get that you'd much rather lie there and never move again for the rest of your life, believe me, I get that, I felt the same when Stane put me through that bus, but I really, really need you to check in with me here, Barton. You're kinda freaking me out, and a freaked out me is never a good thing. Remember how the glow-in-the-dark badger incident ended? That was a freaked out me. Don't want a repeat of that, do we?"

Long seconds passed, then Clint cracked his eyes open just a fraction. "God forbid," he rasped, the quality of his quiet voice just as pale as his skin. He didn't move from his curled up position.

Tony released a breath of relief. Thank god. At least Clint was awake. He could work with that.


	4. Chapter 4

Tony liked to visualize things. Not things like Jackson lifeless on the floor, or Clint's brain getting ventilated, but goals (like getting the hell out of there) and methods (like _how_ to get the hell out of there). What he visualized right now was this: He would find something to use as a screwdriver, then there would be some hand waving, and voila, they'd be flying out of there. There were probably a few more details that needed to go into that middle part, but that would have to wait. His first priority right now was to make sure Barton wasn't dying on him. He didn't for one second think the bastard wouldn't do just that to piss him off.

Tony rubbed at his face. No. Not really. He was self-centered, absolutely, but not to the point that he thought everyone's life (and death) revolved around him. But he'd just seen his chief of security be shot in the head right in front of him, so he was allowed to feel a little dramatic, okay?

He did another visual inspection of what he could see of Clint, which wasn't much, the man was curled up on the floor like a spooked hedgehog. Clint's face was ashen, and the shivers looked like they were getting worse. The man had an astounding ability to push through pain, and Tony wished he didn't know that, because that meant they must have hurt him so damn bad to reduce him to this. He couldn't see anything obviously life-threatening, but knew full well that Clint could have a broken rib poking at his lungs, a concussion, a ruptured spleen, torn insides, broken bones and/or a variety of other internal injuries that might kill him either directly or by way of shock.

Shock. He fumbled for the knowledge on shock he knew he had stored somewhere in his memory banks. _Come on, brain. Check under S for 'Signs of shock'._ Okay. Right. Pallor. Check. Rapid, shallow breathing. Check. Cool skin. Check.

Fuck.

"How not okay are you, Barton? For real?" He put his hand on Clint's trembling shoulder. His whole body was so tense that Tony's own muscles ached in sympathy. "Before you answer, I must warn you that any variation of 'I'm fine' will be ignored, because I have seen you claim to be just dandy with a paring knife sticking out your side. I'm sorry to say it, but that kind of shit puts a significant dent in your credibility, and I'm in no mood—"

"Stark," Clint mumbled and raised his hand in a tiny, abortive motion.

"Yeah?"

Clint let his hand drop. "Gimme… Just gimme a sec, 'kay?" His voice was hoarse, rough.

Tony shook his head. "Sorry, that's a big fat negatory. Gotta get you out of those wet clothes before you shake apart. Now, you gotta understand, that this is my survival instinct talking here, because if you catch pneumonia, Ms. Arachne will blame innocent little me for it. Sure, you and I both know I had nothing to do with you getting wet and—"

Tony shut his mouth sharply. He _had_ had something to do with Clint returning soaked and shivering and hurting more, hadn't he?

He ran a hand over his face and up through his hair, desperately wishing Steve was here. Steve would know what to do in this situation. He would know the right things to say to get Clint talking and moving. He would know what to say to make Clint feel better. Tony didn't. His words were weapons, offensive and defensive, and they didn't mold easily into ones of comfort or encouragement or all of those other things Steve did so well. Bruce was good at the soft stuff, too. Surprisingly, so was Clint. Even Romanoff did better in that area than Tony, come to think of it.

Tony tried to curb the feeling of helplessness that was expanding behind his ribs. Usually he dealt with that unnerving sensation by fixing whatever was fucked up, but there wasn't anything he could fix here, nothing to invent, build or buy to make things right. All he had was his stubbornness. That usually got him pretty far, but it wouldn't be enough to keep Clint alive if he was bleeding out.

"We're going to move, now," Tony informed Clint and scooted closer. He slid his arm slowly in under him. "There's a bed over there fit for a king," he said conversationally. It was more of a slab of metal covered with a sorry excuse of a dirty mattress, but that wasn't really important now. What was important was to get Clint there. "Come on, there's a mountain of amazingly fluffy pillows, soft Egyptian cotton sheets and about sixteen warm Eiderdown covers." He grunted as he managed to get a largely unresisting Clint up. Sort of. Clint was on his feet, but he was hunched over, his breath tightly controlled in that particular way that told Tony he was working hard at getting the upper hand on the pain. He had gone one shade paler than before.

Tony shifted his grip and tried to take as much of Clint's weight as he could as he gave Clint some time to get his balance. He counted to ten. Very slowly.

"You okay to move?"

"No," Clint mumbled, then, "yes."

Tony was willing to bet that the former was a whole lot truer than the latter, but they had to move. They made it across the floor at a snail's pace, Clint hobbling and leaning heavily on him. Tony stopped short of the cot and its thin, stained mattress.

"Sorry, Barton, but those clothes need to come off before you can lie down." He nudged Clint closer to the wall and guided his hand to it to make sure he didn't lose his balance when Tony extricated himself and took a step back. He waited a beat to make sure that Clint didn't end up on the floor again, but he seemed to have locked his knees.

Tony patted his hand. Clint's skin was freezing. "Stay here."

He padded across the floor to Jackson. God, there was something so very wrong with taking something from a dead man, but Clint needed the blanket so much more than Jackson did right now. "Sorry," he whispered as he pulled it off Jackson.

Tony had to intercept Clint's fumbling grab for the blanket when he got back. "Nope. Clothes first or the blanket will end up just as cold and wet as they are."

Clint sagged against the wall and didn't move for a few seconds, then he started to fumble with the hem of his shirt. He had gotten the shirt halfway off when he froze with a groan. Tony set the blanket aside and tried as gently as he could to work the soggy shirt over Clint's head. When it was finally off, Tony tossed it into the corner.

Clint's torso was patchy with dark red and bluish marks, some irregular and diffuse, some sharp slashes, and Tony winced. Jesus. They'd worked him over pretty damn well. Clint crossed his arms over his chest and folded in on himself again, the shivers worse than before. Tony got a better look at the angry-looking chafing across his throat.

"Cold." Clint's teeth were chattering.

"I know, I know. The blanket is waiting for you. You just need to get out of those pants."

Clint drew a shaky breath and seemed to steel himself, then shifted gingerly and started on the button and zipper. He had zero success with the way his fingers shook. Tony hesitated. This was a line he was unwilling to cross. He'd undressed plenty of guys in his wilder years, but Clint wasn't just some guy, he was a friend. It wasn't a conventional kind of friendship; they shared a mutual opinion of the other as a huge pain in the ass, but despite this Clint had somehow wormed his way in under Tony's skin and had become a familiar and safe and welcome presence in his life. He watched Clint fumble with the button for another few seconds, and realized with a sinking feeling in his stomach that yeah, no, that wasn't going to happen.

"You, uh, you need help with that?"

Clint stopped trying, fingers still on the button. He didn't move for a few seconds, then apparently made up his mind and let his hands drop heavily to his sides. He leaned the back of his head against the wall and closed his eyes.

"Is that a yes?"

Clint gave a hint of a nod.

Tony hesitated for a second before quickly working the button and the zipper open. He stepped back. "Wanna give it another go?"

Without looking down, Clint hiked his fingers under the lining of both pants and underwear and pushed them past his hips and down his legs. He moved stiffly to get them down to his knees, bracing one hand against the wall. The wet fabric stuck to his skin, and he kicked inefficiently to get the pants off. Tony knelt and helped pull them the last bit past his feet. He bundled them up and tossed them in the direction of the shirt.

He was getting up when he saw the bruises and the trickle of blood that seeped down the inside of Clint's leg. He froze for a moment, and glanced up at Clint, but his eyes were still closed. The very last fledgling hope that they hadn't done… _that_ to him fled. A sudden surge of anger rose in Tony. Raped, he snapped at himself. No use sugar coating it. They _raped_ him. If Clint had to live through that because some asshole wanted something from Tony, then he could damn well get over his discomfort and call it by its true name. Not that he was likely to ever engage in any kind of conversation that included the dual topics 'Clint' and 'rape'. Well, if Clint brought it up Tony guessed he would listen, that would be the only decent thing to do, but he doubted very much that would ever happen. Most likely this thing would be off limits for a long time, until it wasn't, and then it would be glossed over and referred to only as 'that shitty thing'. Tony would be okay with that. But the truth still remained, Clint had been hurt because of Tony, and he wasn't going to let himself soften the harsh reality of it by wrapping it up in euphemisms.

He stood and helped settle the blanket around Clint's shoulders. Clint grabbed the edges and pulled it tightly around himself.

"Come on, I think it's naptime for you," Tony said and tried to keep his tone light. He steered Clint the few steps to the cot and helped him sit down. He could see Clint bite back a groan as he gingerly lay down. Tony leaned over and tucked the blanket in around Clint. "Look," he said and tried to smile. "I made a Burton-burrito." He reached out, meaning to feel for Clint's pulse, but Clint's arm came up to block him. Not in violence or in panic, just a wordless 'not right now' plea. Tony raised his hands. "Message received. Five by five."

Clint pulled the blanket up high again until only the spiky wet hair on the top of his head was visible.

"Are you…" Tony trailed off. Whatever question he went with, he knew the answer.

 _Uncomfortable? Yes. Hurting? Yes. Bleeding? Yes. Cold? Yes. Okay? Hell no._

It wasn't like he could slap a Mickey Mouse band aid on the kind of injuries Clint probably had. The only thing he could think to do was to elevate his feet to help keep his blood pressure up if he really was in shock. So that was what he was going to do.

"Heads up, I'm gonna get on the bed and slide my legs under yours."

He waited a few seconds to give Clint ample time to protest, then climbed over his legs and insinuated himself under Clint's calves. Clint's breath hitched as he twisted a little to better accommodate the position. Tony tucked the blanket tighter around his bare feet.

"You'd tell me if you were dying, right?" He fussed with the blanket for longer than strictly necessary, smoothed it down over Clint's wrists. "'Cause stealth dying on me the moment I turn my head would be a total dick move."

"Not dying." Clint's teeth were still chattering. "Jus' cold."

 _Yeah, sure. Just cold. Good one, Barton_.

"If you want to, I could, um, share some of my furnace-like heat with you. Cuddle up under the blanket with you." Tony didn't feel like a furnace, he was cold and scared and miserable, and he felt like a full-on bastard for being relieved when Clint shook his head.

For the next hour or so Tony sat with Clint's legs in his lap and pulled up mental images of things he was working with in his lab. The gate logic he needed to implement in the new μFPGA for his suit was almost done, so he designed most of what was left in his head. He spent some time on the new high-speed data bus, calculating the impedance impact on various combinations of pcb characteristics to make sure there was no mismatch.

Clint's shivering eventually grew less pronounced, and the impossible tension in his body faded a little.

When he finally spoke, Tony closed his eyes in relief.

"You okay?" Clint didn't move from his curled up position, but his voice was steadier now. Low, still hoarse and raw-sounding, but not quite as bad as before.

"Yeah." The worst Tony had gotten this far was a few bruises and bleeding lip from when they tore the tape off his mouth.

Clint stayed in his little cocoon for a few minutes more, then pushed the blanket down off his face. Tony could almost see him pulling himself together, pushing past that blankness that had clung to him ever since they brought him back that last time. He could see Clint behind those eyes now.

As Clint cautiously uncurled a fraction, Tony lifted his legs and slipped out from under them. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Peachy," Clint groaned and sat up slowly. He twisted and slid his legs over the edge of the bed, his face pinched. He looked up at Tony. The bruises on his face had already started darken. "Gimme a hand?"

Tony helped him up, but Clint leaned over with a moan, one palm flat on his thighs, the other holding the blanket around himself. He blew a harsh breath past his clenched teeth. "Son of a bitch," he gritted out.

"What?"

"The bastards kicked me in the nuts," he panted. "Repeatedly."

Tony was pretty sure Clint was truthful about that, but he wasn't quite as sure that was the only source of the pain that kept Clint from standing up straight.

He hovered by Clint's side, but didn't touch. "Can you believe some people get off on having their balls busted?" he said. "Makes my junk hurt just thinking about it. Way back when, I had this chick over for dinner and a quiet night of, uh, board games—"

Clint opened one eye and squinted up at Tony. "You mean you brought her home to fuck her stupid."

Tony shrugged. "You say tomato, I say whatever. Anyway, everything was going splendidly, she used her scarf to tie my wrists and secure them to the headboard, and then she did this amazing thing with her fingers. She told me to get on my knees and hold onto the bedframe, then hooked her fingers like this and—"

"Jesus," Clint rasped. "TMI."

"Don't be a prude."

Clint straightened slowly, inch by inch. "Does this tale of debauchery have a point, or are you just talking to hear yourself?"

"As lovely as the dulcet notes of my voice are, my tale does indeed have a point." Tony paused for a moment. "Well," he conceded, "I don't know that it's actually a point, it's really more of an anecdote. Either way, there I was, enjoying the—"

"Board game?"

"Heh, yes, enjoying the board game. I was feeling pretty damn good about life, then wham! She grabbed my boys and squeezed. I'm not ashamed to say I screamed like a little girl." He gave an exaggerated shudder. "It was a very traumatic experience."

"Uh-huh." Clint was mostly upright now.

That was the moment when the sound of a key in the lock was heard. Both their heads swiveled to the door. One of the guys that had dragged Clint to the room walked into the room ahead of Cortes. Two more armed guards stayed outside the room.

Tony moved in front of Clint.

"Have you reconsidered your answer, Stark?" Cortes asked. He looked smug, but at least he wasn't smiling that smarmy smile so many villains seemed to favor. "Are you willing to make a small down payment towards the debt you owe humanity?"

"I can't." Tony glared at him. "I literally can't. Everything has been locked down. When I go dark a timer starts ticking, and when it reaches twelve hours, the system initiates a lockdown of all my private accounts." One of the guys outside the door opened his mouth to say something, but Tony cut him off. "Yes, I know, twelve hours haven't passed yet, but the dead bodies and the blood in the garage will have alerted people, and there are protocols for that, too. Even if I wanted to, I can't get my hands on more than a few thousand right now."

Cortes looked at the blonde guy at the back, the one who had bounced Tony's face off the wall when they took Clint away, the one who had murdered Jackson. The guy nodded in return and advanced on Tony and Clint. But it wasn't Tony who was the target this time, either.

 _No way. No. Fucking. Way._

He charged the bastard, causing him to stumble backwards in surprise. Tony might not have the close combat skills Clint and Natasha did, but he was far from some flailing damsel in distress. He managed to get a few decent hits in before he found himself on the receiving end of a surprising Bruce Lee move. His breath was forced out of him as his back impacted the wall. He slid to the floor with a ringing head and what felt like one hell of a fat lip.

He was already halfway to his knees when the guy pulled his gun from its holster and aimed it at Clint's head.

"Don't do that again," he said flatly.

Tony sank back onto the floor, his hands up. "Okay, okay," he panted. "Take it easy. No need to get trigger happy."

"Bring it," Cortes called to the guys in the hallway, and a large bucket was brought in. Tony watched Clint's eyes follow it as it was brought over. Clint flinched when it was emptied over his head, soaking him and the blanket that had fallen when he had been forced down onto the floor.

"I'll be back," Cortes promised and left the room. His goons followed suit.

Clint coughed. "Fuck," he wheezed.

"You okay?" Tony helped him up. Icy water seeped through his shirt as he pulled Clint's arm over his shoulder.

"Yeah. Wetter. Colder, 's all." He gave Tony a thin, crooked grin. "Bit of a wake-up call, that." He stumbled and looked down. The grin faded.

Both of them stared at the blanket that lay soaked by their feet.

"That's… That's not good," Tony said.

"It's not," Clint agreed. He was already starting to shiver again.

"Come on, let's sit you down." Tony helped him sit down, then started to unbutton his own shirt. He would be fine with just his undershirt.

"Tony—"

"Shut up." Tony concentrated on the buttons. He knew what Clint was going to say and he didn't want to hear it. "This place isn't heated and we don't know how cold it's going to get. Temperatures have been in the mid-thirties the past couple of night, and if you think I'm going to watch you shiver your way towards hypothermia and death you're sorely mistaken."

"I'm not a big fan of freezing my ass off." A stronger shudder ran through Clint. "Been there, done that, way too many times. But I'm telling you to keep your clothes. I don't need them."

"Oh, right, silly me. I mean, it's not like you're sitting there shaking so much I can almost hear your bones rattle," Tony snapped. He was in no mood for Clint's self-sacrificing bullshit.

"Tony." Clint's voice went sharp. Tony's fingers stopped at the second to last button as Clint held his gaze for two long seconds. "I don't need them. I'll just…" Clint's eyes wandered to the right, and it took Tony way too long to understand what he was looking at.

"You're kidding me. Please, tell me you're kidding me." Tony sagged down next to Clint on the cot. "You're not kidding me."

They both stared at Jackson's lifeless body. Jackson. Dead. Shot in the head.

And dressed in perfectly dry clothes.

"Jesus." Tony buried his face in his hands. He suddenly felt as tired as Clint sounded. "This is so fucked up."

"He won't miss them," Clint said hollowly.

"No, he won't," Tony agreed behind his hands. "It's still fucked up." He felt Clint shift to get up and he put one of his hands on Clint's shoulder, holding him in place. Clint was still hurting, still injured. He sighed. "I'll get them."

"It's fine. I'll do it." Clint made another stiff attempt at getting up, but changed his mind when something apparently twinged badly and he sat back down heavily.

Tony sighed again. Loudly this time. "Like I said, I'll get them."

Clint squinted up at him from his hunched over position. "You sure?" He sounded breathless.

Tony licked his dry lips. He looked at Jackson. "Yeah," he said without much conviction. Then he squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. "Yeah, yeah, I am." He got to his feet before he could chicken out.

He knelt by Jackson and hesitated for just a second before starting in on the buttons on his black shirt. SI Security was stitched in silver on the front pocket. "Sorry, buddy," he whispered.

It was a perfectly reasonable thing to do in this situation, perfectly logical, dead men felt no cold, but Tony's fingers still trembled. He finally managed to get the last button undone. He paused as he realized that that was the easy part. Now to get the shirt off. Tony reached out, then pulled his hand back. _Come on, Stark. Just do it._ He took a fortifying breath, then grabbed the far arm and rolled Jackson onto his front. Tony came face to face with the ruined back of his head.

"He's—God, it's all…"

"Tony. Concentrate on the clothes. Just get it done." Clint's voice was steady and calm behind him, and Tony swallowed drily. He took another steadying breath. _Right. Okay. Get it done._

It took a few minutes to get the shirt off, and by then Tony was sweating. Briefly he considered leaving the undershirt, but a look over his shoulder at Clint, curled up with his arms around himself, made him change his mind. He coaxed the shirt up and over the dead man's head, trying to keep it as clean on it as he could.

As soon as the undershirt was off he hurried back on shaky legs and helped Clint on with it. He handed him the black shirt. Good thing Jackson was a bigger guy than Clint.

"I'll be right back," he told Clint and went back for the pants.

He left Jackson with his underwear. It felt undignified to strip him of those, too. Tony doubted it would help much, anyway, and Clint would probably be just as happy that he left them. The black pants were easier to get off than the shirts, and he returned with them before Clint had managed to thread the last button through its hole. Tony knelt and pulled the pants over Clint's ice cold feet. "You need to stand up."

With Tony's aid, Clint got to his feet. He held onto Tony's shoulder as Tony pulled the pants up over his hips. Then Clint took over and this time he managed to work both the zipper and the buttons.

Tony headed back to Jackson and carefully rolled him back onto his back. He arranged Jackson's head and carefully placed his arms by his sides. He still looked very dead. Tony looked down at his hands. They were streaked with dark blood from the back of Jackson's head that hadn't quite dried as it had rested against the floor. He used Clint's discarded, wet clothes to clean himself off.

Clint had stretched out on the cot when he returned, and Tony sat down on the floor by the foot end and leaned against the edge. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing for a while. Maybe he'd take this opportunity to do some quite freaking out. But then he realized he was too tired to do much of anything, so he just sat there with his arms resting on his drawn up knees. He prodded softly at his throbbing lower lip with his tongue. Ouch. He tried his teeth. One of his canines felt wobbly.

Great. Just great.

Then he remembered that Clint had gotten a lot worse, and God, Tony was such a fucking _child_.

"They'll find us soon," he said. He was suddenly uncertain if the stupid reassurance was for Clint's sake or his.

"Yes, they will."

Tony stared at Jackson. No matter how soon they were freed, it would still be too late for him. He folded his arms tightly across his chest and hunched in a little on himself, much like Clint had done earlier. "I don't know if he has a wife," he admitted. "Girlfriend. Kids. Never asked." He felt his throat close up and swallowed thickly. "He's been on my personal security detail for two years, and I don't even know his first name."


	5. Chapter 5

Hours passed. Clint slept, and to keep himself from freaking out too much, Tony turned his mind back to his designs. He assembled, disassembled and reassembled his suit twice, thought out a validation scheme for the new repulsor prototype, and was starting in on coding a new sub-routine for JARVIS when the overhead lights suddenly went out.

He blinked at the lingering afterimages of the fluorescent tubes. Without windows and with no light trickling in from the outside, the room was truly dark. Pitch black. He raised his hand in front of his face, but didn't see anything, not a hint of movement when he wiggled his fingers. It sent a trickle of unease down his spine. He wasn't afraid of the dark, hell no, but there were different flavors of darkness, and Tony liked them to varying degrees.

He liked nights in the city. Not really dark at all, but the darkness was still there, hovering above the lights and deepening at the edges of the city where the glow didn't quite reach. He loved that. And flying low over the countryside at night, seeing nothing but stars and black patches of fields and forests, interspersed with just the occasional pinprick of light. That, too. He used to sneak out after midnight as a kid, strolling along the pathways at the far back of the gated mansion grounds. The darkness there had been deep and thrilling, but he knew there were high walls and security guards, and the only real danger was tripping over his own feet or running into a grouchy badger. And then, of course, there was the darkness of his and Pepper's bedroom. The best kind. Warm and safe. Home.

So no, Tony Stark wasn't afraid of the dark. He flexed his fingers. But this? This wasn't darkness as much as it was an absolute absence of light. It felt bigger, heavier, like it had mass. Together with the whole hostage thing and the chill it suddenly felt a little too much like Afghanistan, and shit, it was never a good sign when his mind went there. He rubbed his forehead and tried to will the unease from out under his skin. It didn't work. Did they know? Did they know that cutting the lights might freak him out? Make him less likely to do something stupid? No. He shook his head in the darkness. No, they couldn't know. Rhodey was the only one he had told everything, the whole story. Not even Pepper knew everything. He'd told her some, but not the darkest details. And the rest of the world only knew what had been in the short statement that had been released by SI after his now infamous press conference.

There had certainly been nothing in there about a cold, damp cave, nothing about the darkness that had tried to suffocate him when the power had been cut for days at the time, when he and Jinzen hadn't known if this was the time their captors had grown tired of Tony's stalling and had left them to die. After the first few times, they had started to stock up on what little food and water they could spare. Just in case. Neither of them had mentioned the obvious, that without power to regularly charge the car battery that Tony was still attached to, he would be dead long before thirst or hunger killed him.

Tony crossed his arms tightly over his chest and curled up a little tighter. Then something occurred to him and he sat up straighter again. Maybe the lights hadn't been turned off by their captors, maybe the power had been cut by someone from the outside. Maybe the guys were here and they were getting out of this shithole any moment. He got his knees and listened intently, but heard nothing. Not yet.

"You think it's the guys?" he asked Clint, but got no answer.

Tony got to his feet and slowly started across the floor, his hands in front of him to avoid anything that might be in his way in the solid darkness. He felt utterly stupid, because there he knew full well that there was nothing but empty space between him and the door, but it just felt safer. Suddenly, a mental image of Jackson standing between him and the door flashed in Tony's head. His stomach clenched tightly, and he pulled his hands close to his body. Frozen in place he tried to remind himself that he didn't believe in the living dead any more than he believed in Santa, but with every second the feeling of a presence in front of him grew stronger. Get a grip, Stark. There were no such thing as the boogieman, and there was certainly no cooling, undressed corpse waiting to grab him with cold hands. His feet still resisted moving. God, he was never watching another zombie movie in his whole life. Ever. As soon as they got out of here, he was getting a restraining order against them. The zombies _and_ the related movies. One hundred yards, minimum.

Despite the way his heart was pounding, he eventually managed to convince himself to continue towards the door. He took one step. Listened. Then another one. And another. When he estimated that he must be somewhere by the door, he reluctantly reached out into the darkness. He almost scared himself to death when his fingertips brushed against something. A half-hysteric little giggle escaped when his brain identified it as the door.

He pressed his ear to the cold metal surface of the door and held his breath, strained his hearing to the max. Silence. No shooting, no shouting, no booms, no nothing that indicated that an armed assault was underway. He waited. If they were coming in silently he might not hear anything for a while.

He counted to fifty slowly.

Nothing.

He counted to one hundred. Still nothing.

"It's not them." Clint's tired, gravelly voice felt loud in the silence, and Tony shushed him.

He kept his ear pressed against the door, but when he had counted to two thousand he reluctantly had to admit to himself that yeah, Clint was probably right, they weren't getting out of here. Not yet.

Disappointed, he made his way back across the floor, fumbling in the darkness for the edge of the cot when he estimated he was getting close to it. His hand brushed against what he figured was Clint's leg as he lowered himself back down on the floor. A full-body shiver ran through him, and he stuffed his cold hands into his armpits. He wasn't a prude, wouldn't mind sharing a little body heat, but there was this little matter of Clint having been banged up and… well, just plain banged, and he didn't want to ask, because Clint probably didn't want someone plastered against him right now. Tony started when Clint suddenly spoke.

"You should come up here. It's warmer than sitting on the floor."

"I'm okay," Tony assured him.

"Don't be an idiot."

"It's fine." He stared into the darkness and tried to not think about the warmth not two feet away. God, being considerate sucked ass.

"Stark—"

Oh, fuck this. Tony was moving at the first syllable.

"Okay, fine, if you really insist." He climbed over Clint and insinuated himself between the wall and him. Carefully he wormed closer, until his front was pressed up against the back of his teammate. With Clint's warmth slowly seeping through the layers of clothes between them, he relaxed with a sigh. A moment later, he froze. "Would it, uh, would it be better if I was in front of you and you could cozy up behind me?"

"It's fine."

"I can move."

"For God's sake, Stark," Clint bit out. "Just get comfortable and get some shut-eye."

Tony made a sound of offense, but the edge in Clint's voice was _so_ much preferable to the gray flatness that had clung to him ever since he was brought back. "See if I ever try to be considerate again," he said.

"I won't hold my breath," Clint mumbled.

Resting sounded like a wonderful idea, Tony felt like he hadn't slept since the late eighties, but the situation wouldn't let his brain quiet down. They were still stuck in this godawful place, with assholes who wanted Tony's money and was more than ready to resort to violence to get it. Not violence against him, but against Clint. And Jackson. Jackson had paid the ultimate price for associating with Tony. Sure, it had been in his job description to stand between Tony and danger, but this hadn't been that, this had been an execution.

In the darkness Tony's mind started wandering. How long until Jackson would start to bloat and smell? He had seen a decaying body once. Her skin had looked like waxy, semi-translucent plastic, and her dark, swollen tongue had stuck out of her mouth grotesquely. Flies had been crawling in her milky eyes. Jesus fuck, now he couldn't stop thinking about Jackson looking like that. He shifted closer and his forehead brushed against the cold, wet hair at the back of Clint's head.

"Still cold?" he asked, desperate for something to keep his mind off dead bodies.

"It's fine."

"Yeah, that's not what I asked."

Clint sighed. "Yes. I'm cold, but I'll live."

"How about…" Tony hesitated, then carefully slid his arm under Clint's and draped it lightly across his chest. Clint hadn't seemed too freaked out about Tony's proximity when he had climbed in behind him, so maybe it was okay. When no protest came, he pulled his teammate a little closer. "This okay?"

"Yeah." Clint's voice was quiet, but steady. "It's fine."

Right. Tony very much doubted there was anything about Clint's situation that was 'fine', but there was a time and a place for calling him on that.

Never and nowhere.

Despite the cold and the worry and the generally fucked-up-ness of their situation, Tony eventually dozed off. He hadn't yet drifted into true sleep when the lights suddenly came back on, glaring and harsh. Clint didn't move, but Tony felt the tension in his body and knew he too was awake.

The locks clicked and the door swung open. Tony recognized the first one through the door. The weirdly colorless bastard that had shot Jackson in the head. The second guy was someone new to Tony.

"Get up," the guy ordered. He was older, looked every bit like a stereotype redneck trucker, complete with a henley under a plaid shirt, ill-fitting, baggy jeans and a gut that hung heavily over his belt. He even had a dirty old John Deere cap pushed back far on his head.

Without a word, Clint slid his legs off the cot and got to his feet. He moved stiffly, but had no trouble staying upright this time. Tony stayed close to his elbow just in case. Clint's wrists were quickly secured with a black zip tie. Tony could see the hard edges of the plastic digging sharply into his skin. He gave Clint a quick sideways glance. His face was passive, eyes locked on the wall, but there was no way to miss the high-current hum of deadly intent coming off him. These guys were on his shit list in a big way, and Tony had a good idea why.

Colorless stepped in behind Clint, pressed himself close and Tony gritted his teeth against the urge to snarl at him to get the fuck away from his teammate.

"This view sure brings back memories," Colorless leered and ran his hands down the length of Clint's arms.

"See, now you're doing the gay thing again," Clint said mildly.

The next second, the back of his head impacted with Colorless nose. The man stumbled back with a sound of pain, his hand coming up to his nose, and Tony's breath caught in his chest. _No, no, no. Chill, Barton. Don't piss them off. Please, don't piss them off. Don't make them hurt you again._

"Son of a bitch," Colorless growled thickly. Blood ran between his fingers, down his chin and dripped to the floor. He grabbed Clint's tied arms and hauled him around, making Clint stumble and tripping him with a kick to the back of his knee. Clint hit the floor heavily, too off balance to stay on his feet.

Fat Trucker popped a stick of chewing gum in his mouth, balled up the wrapper and tossed it at Jackson's body. "Stop messing around," he ordered Colorless.

Colorless gave Clint's side one last punch before getting his knee off his back and getting to his feet. Fat Trucker pointed at the other guy. "You. Take care of that one." He nodded in Tony's direction.

Tony reluctantly turned around when he was told to, but not before taking one last worried look at Clint, curled up on his side, eyes screwed shut and breathing raggedly. Then something was pulled over Tony's head. He ducked instinctively away from it, and it was his turn to take a fist to the back. His forehead hit the concrete wall.

"Don't move." The bag was pulled down and secured around Tony's neck.

Tony's heart pounded in his chest, and he suddenly heard the rush of his own blood in his ears. He scrabbled at the pressure around his neck. "No, you don't have to-" He groaned as he took another hit and his arms were twisted up behind his back. Two seconds later, his wrists were zip tied too. "There's no need for this," he gasped. The only answer was a hand grabbing the back of his shirt and dragging him towards the door.

The fabric of the bag was rough against his face, smelled like damp and rot, and god, he couldn't breathe. This wasn't Afghanistan. This wasn't the Ten Rings. This wasn't a cave. He wasn't going to be taken to some dark dungeon and drowned because he wouldn't build weapons for them. His lungs burned. He could see a hint of shapes and movement through the weave, and that meant that plenty of oxygen was coming through, but it just didn't feel like it.

"Let's go, Purdy," he heard Fat Trucker say behind him.

The words were followed by a pained grunt, and seconds later he heard the sound of a body bouncing off the door. Clint, Tony thought. Clint was going, too. He felt shame prickle at him. He shouldn't want Clint to come along to whatever nastiness waited, but God help him, he did. He didn't want to go alone.

They were herded away from the room. He tried to keep track of the number of turns, right, left, left, right, then someone grabbed his shoulders and turned him around. And around and around, like a spinning top. When he was finally allowed to stop, he stumbled, dizzy and disoriented, but hands caught him before he fell. He heard a crash, and Clint cursing under his breath. Apparently he didn't get the same care and attention. Tony swayed on his feet. There was no way of knowing which direction was which now.

It took thirty, maybe forty seconds before they reached their destination. Another room. Larger. Tony could hear the change in acoustics even through the bag. He was shoved onto a chair. Movement. Voices. He heard something scraping across the floor, then the bag over his head was untied and pulled off. He squinted and blinked owlishly at the brightly lit room. Cortes stood in front of him, next to a camera on a tripod. A little red light was already blinking.

Tony's cuffs were cut, and Clint was manhandled into position behind the camera, placed in Tony's direct line of sight. There was a bag over his head, too.

"You're going to read this," Cortes informed Tony and motioned to a tablet, held up by Fat Trucker. A text was slowly scrolling down on the screen, teleprompter style. "I'll let you read it through once, then we'll get going."

Tony squinted at the text as it rolled past. "Nope," he said after about ten lines. The manifesto ran very much in the same vein as Cortes's initial rant. "I'm gonna cite irreconcilable stupidity here. There is no way in hell I'm reading this crap."

"That so?"

A nasty looking cattle prod was pressed to Clint's lower back made Tony change his mind. Clint had suffered enough, and only because Tony had pressured him, had whined and wheedled ceaselessly until Clint had said yes just to make Tony stop bugging him.

"Whenever you're ready, Mr. Stark," Cortes said.

Tony read it. Every single stupid word of it. The threats, the instructions, the interspersed ideologistic bullshit. "There," he said disgustedly when he finished. "I read it. Let him go."

"We're not done, Mr. Stark," Cortes informed him.

Clint was dragged in front of the camera and the bag was pulled off his head. Colorless shoved the cattle prod harder into his ribs.

Tony raised his hands. "No, don't-!

Clint made a strangled sound. He hit the ground with a heavy thud.

"Assholes," Tony growled.

"You have six hours to deliver the money," Cortes told the camera. "Comply and your friends will be released. Miss the deadline and…" He motioned to Colorless who pulled his gun from under his jacket, calmly removed the safety and pulled the trigger.

Tony's leg exploded with pain and he doubled over, clasping at his thigh with both hands. Over the ringing of his ears, he heard Cortes continue to talk.

"I will provide medical care for Mr. Stark, but miss the deadline and that all stops."

"You shoot me," Tony panted in disbelief, his voice high and tight. "You fucking shot me!" Wet warmth trickled between his fingers.

"Six hours," Cortes repeated to the camera, then motioned for Fat Trucker to turn it off.

"Motherfuckers," Tony hissed, his hands white-knuckled around his leg. A puddle of red was already forming on the floor. He couldn't hold back a whimper as pain and nausea expanded in his gut.

"Get him up," Cortes ordered with a glance at Clint. "And get Stark sorted out."

He watched numbly as Clint was hauled to his feet. Colorless shoved him at Fat Trucker who grabbed his arm and steadied him. Tony saw Clint's hands clench into fists behind his back. Fat Trucker grabbed Clint's jaw and drew his thumb over his lower lip, pulling back when Clint bared his teeth.

Clint growled something so low Tony couldn't make the words out, but Fat Trucker just shrugged with a small grin. "We'll see," he said.

Then it was Tony's turn to be hoisted to his feet. The movement sent a bolt of lightning pain up his leg, and cold sweat broke out over his skin. Colorless and his nameless cohort pulled his arms over their shoulders and more or less dragged him across the floor.

"You are a fucking idiot," Tony told Cortes hoarsely. "If you think this is going to make them more inclined to pay, you're wrong. Dead wrong. Emphasis on dead. What will happen is that they will look harder, find us faster, and kill you slower."

Cortes didn't even look at him, busy removing the camera from the tripod. Tony was dragged out, and he craned his neck to see if Clint was behind him, but all he saw was the door closing between them.


	6. Chapter 6

Tony blinked slowly at the IV bag that dripped clear liquid into his arm. Painkillers, he figured, because his leg wasn't hurting much any longer, just aching dully. But God, he was thirsty. He reached blindly over the edge of the cot, fumbling for the bottle of water he'd seen them place on the floor next to it before they left him there, but his fingers found only dusty concrete. Where was the damn bottle? He tried to reach further, but a sharp twinge made him reconsider. He closed his eyes and let his hand drop to the floor in defeat. Forget dying from being shot, he was going to die from thirst.

Something nudged at his hand, and he opened his eyes. Clint held out the coveted water bottle. He was seated on the floor, back against the side of the cot and knees pulled up. Tony frowned. Last time he blinked Clint had been at the other side of the room checking out the door again.

"Hi," Tony said. His voice came out raspy and he cleared his throat.

"Hey."

"Didn't hear you move." His fingers fumbled on the bottle cap.

Clint took the bottle from his hands. He opened it before handing it back, and Tony drank deeply and gratefully. Lukewarm water had never, ever tasted better. As he drank, Tony squinted at his teammate and tried to get his brain to start working like it should. He could remember pieces of the last few hours, like reading the proclamation in front of the camera, and he most definitely remembered the pain of being shot. He also remembered worrying about Clint. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he should know why, but a whole lot of his brain cells were having a pharmaceutical pool party and he wasn't really at his sharpest right now.

No matter what he had worried about, it looked like it had been justified. Clint looked pretty bad. His lower lip was split and reddish blue bruising spread up his jaw, turning darker below his eye. He had a raw, painful looking scrape on his forehead. A streak of dirt painted a matte, gritty trail up the side of his face. It was in his hair too. It was everywhere. His black clothes were more gray than not. He looked like he'd been rolling on the damn floor.

"You should wash that out," Tony said and pointed at the scrape. "Jesus, don't do that." He tried to catch Clint's hand as it came up to prod at the wound but missed. His hand-eye coordination must be attending the same party as his brain cells. "You'll just rub it in."

"It's fine."

"It's _not_ fine," Tony said, because Clint's hands were far from clean and there was no way that dirt wasn't chockfull of nasty pathogens just waiting to find a suitable point of entry into their bodies. Clint should know better. Infections weren't something to be taken lightly. "You'll get leprosy. Or Cholera." Tony paused. "Or something that actually makes sense." He sighed. "Just pretend I said something that made sense." He pressed his hand over his eyes and tried once again to clear the cobwebs from his brain, but the fluorescent lights overhead hummed loudly and annoyingly in the silent room. Something wasn't right with one of the tubes, it shouldn't be that noisy. God, it was distracting. He was lying there trying to diagnose the problem when his eyes suddenly snapped open as everything from the past hours suddenly crystalized into perfect sharpness. His stomach dropped suddenly and painfully. Jesus. Clint. They had hurt Clint again.

"You okay, Stark?"

Tony realized he must have made some kind of noise, because when he looked up Clint was watching him intently. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm-" He paused. "Obviously not fine, defintely not fine, but no worse than before."

Clint didn't exactly look convinced, but dropped it. He shifted on the concrete floor, turned so he was half-facing Tony. To keep Tony in view, not doubt. He sat leaning forward a little, underarms resting on his drawn up knees. If it hadn't been for the dirt and the bruises and the crusted blood in hir hair, Tony could have mistaken his body language for relaxed, but it was clear they had worked him over again. Tony was beyond grateful he didn't look like he had when they had brought him back that first time. Tony let himself hope that they had just beaten him this time, and God, everything really _was_ relative, but with Clint is was hard to know. He looked a little better, probably had had some time to recover, but more than likely he had gotten his game face properly on, and no matter what they did to him now, they wouldn't get the same reaction of him again. Everything Clint showed from now on would be deliberate. Nothing reactive.

It was an ability Tony sometimes envied him, but more often than not, it just freaked him out. This frighteningly controlled side of Clint invariably made Tony think of Phil Coulson. It was no secret that Clint had been pretty young when he had been recruited by SHIELD. Certainly no secret to Tony, who had done some digging and gotten his hands on everyone's files first thing after Loki's New York visit. He was under no illusion that the ones on Clint and Natasha were complete, or even halfway truthful. The files probably contained just enough for the administrators to be happy. From what he had learned from those meager files, Coulson had been one of several handlers who had taken Clint Barton on and wrangled him into the professional he had later become. Eventually Coulson had become Clint's only handler and had headed up the STRIKE team that had turned Natasha and Clint into SHIELD legends and shaped them into the unbreakable unit of two they still were today.

Coulson had perfected the blank non-look he saw echoed on Clint's face now. Tony had become closely familiar with it, since he seemed to be the target of it at least once every time Coulson and he met. Tony wondered if Clint had imprinted on him somehow during his impressionable years. He suppressed a snicker as he suddenly pictured Clint trailing after Coulson like a duckling after its duck mommy. When his brain turned Clint into a golden ball of fuzz, desperately trying to keep up with Coulson on his short and webbed duckling feet, the snicker could no longer be contained.

"What?"

"Did Coulson teach you how to peck for seeds? And worms and bugs?" When Clint looked blankly at him, Tony lost the battle with the giggles. Oh, God. He clapped his hand over his mouth. What the hell was wrong with him?

Oh. Yeah. Right.

"I'm on drugs," Tony stupidly informed him, and pointed at the IV.

"You don't say." Clint got his legs under himself and rose from the floor with a groan. He sat down on the edge of the cot and leaned closer to Tony's leg. Tony steeled himself against a burst of expected pain as Clint slid a finger under the white bandages and lifted a fraction, revealing a hint of the surgical pad that had been taped down.

"How does it look?" Tony hadn't looked too closely, too freaked out by the fact that he had a damn hole in his leg. Holes didn't belong in legs.

"Hasn't bled through, so that's good. The bandages look like they know what they're doing." Clint scooted down to the foot end of the cot. "How are you feeling?"

" _Shot_ is how I'm feeling. Imagine that." Tony raised himself up on his elbows when he felt Clint's hands on his bare foot. Clint took a firm grip, carefully stabilizing his foot so that his leg wouldn't move, and pressed his nail hard against the nail bed of Tony's big toe. Clint's hands were warm, and until just then Tony hadn't realized just how cold his feet were. "This isn't some weird fetish of yours, right?" He squinted down at Clint.

Clint held the pressure for a few seconds before letting up. He kept his hold on Tony's foot for another couple of seconds, then let go and reached down and grabbed the water bottle from the floor. He unscrewed the cap and handed it to Tony again. "You're dehydrated. Drink."

Oh. Of course. That's what it was. Checking for dehydration and blood flow. Tony knew that.

He took a deep swig of the water, and started coughing as it went down the wrong way. "Ow, ow, fucking ow," he groaned. His leg didn't like being jarred like that. Not at all. He slumped back, a little breathless. "God. Being shot sucks." He stared up at the dirty ceiling. "Know what else sucks? All those movies where the hero takes a bullet, and he just shrugs it off and soldiers on, saving the day and the woman and all that crap. Being shot is nothing like the movies."

"Sure it is." Clint arranged the fabric of Tony's cut pant leg to cover as much skin as possible. "You're just doing it wrong."

"Oh, shut up." Tony let his head fall to the side. The movement sent a wave of lightheadedness over him and he groaned again. These painkillers _sucked_. He wanted the kind he had gotten when he broke his arm a few years back, or that time he had dental surgery. Wow, yeah, _those_ were amazing. He had been just about floating. Not a care in the world, but _no_ , Cortes had to be a cheap bastard and go for the low-end stuff that left Tony dizzy and nauseous. He had been shot, dammit. He deserved some good drugs.

"Hey, you've been shot, right?" he asked Clint.

Clint held up two fingers.

"I bet you cried like a little girl."

"Made it three miles across rough terrain to a safehouse." Clint shrugged at Tony's look. "Adrenaline and delayed pain onset are wonderful things." He slid down to sit the floor again. "Once I got there, though, I puked and cried like a little girl. Ask Natasha. I'm pretty sure she has video evidence." The words were right, were very Clint Barton, but the tone was off.

"Where?"

"Where what? Where does Natasha keep her blackmail material?"

"Where were you shot?" Tony clarified.

Clint pointed at his clavicle and somewhere around his hip region. Tony couldn't see over the edge of the cot.

"Mogadishu? Peshawar?" Tony tried think of more conflict zones that might fit the timeline of Clint's career. "Kosovo? It was Kosovo, right? Was it Kosovo?"

"Classified."

Tony rolled his eyes and was rewarded with a wave of low-key vertigo. He planted his hand against the wall as the cot rolled sickly under him. "Never heard of Classified. Is it nice?"

"I was shot, Stark, so, no, it wasn't nice."

The vertigo faded to the background again. Tony dared open his eyes. "North Korea?"

When Clint didn't engage further, Tony draped his arm across his eyes. The sound and the glare of the overhead light were starting to hurt his head. "I'm injured. Show some consideration and tell me of your adventures to take my mind off it." From under his arm, he watched Clint press his hand against his left shoulder and roll it slowly. The movement looked stiff and painful.

Tony held up his hand and pointed at the cannula. "You want some? It's shitty quality, but it's better than nothing."

"I'm good."

"Sure?" Tony asked again, because hey, he was a good guy, he would share with Clint. Fuck all those who claimed he couldn't play well with others. He _could_. In fact he played very well with others when he chose to. And he was choosing to play well with Clint, because Clint was a good guy, too.

"One hundred percent sure."

Tony looked at the taped down tubing, then grimaced. "Yeah. I guess it would be kinda unsanitary."

Clint hummed and scrubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes, and suddenly Tony hated the way he looked. Tired and grim and hard, and there was something about his eyes that made Tony think of overcured polymers, hardened to the point where plasticity was lost, and that wasn't right. Clint was always flexible, was always adaptable. He had many faces, had shown on many occasions that he was able to go from character to character to character effortlessly, each as believable as the next. But this look, no, this look should never be one of them.

"C'mere." Tony gestured him closer.

Clint scooted up the cot, and Tony reached and pressed his index finger lightly against the tension that was etched around Clint's mouth, smoothing the unwanted lines out.

Both of Clint's brows lifted a fraction.

"I don't like when you look like that," Tony explained. He pressed the pad of his finger lightly into Clint's cheek, pulling sideways, seeing if he could arrange his face into something more familiar. He was careful not to disturb the bruises and the scrapes. "You don't look like you. You look like someone else and I don't like it." He kept moving his finger, pressing and prodding lightly. He was fixing Clint's face.

"Man, I wish I had a camera." Clint pulled his head back, out of reach. "Natasha would laugh her ass off."

"Stop it," Tony chided. He wrapped his hand around the back of Clint's neck and pulled him closer again. "I'm _fixing_ you." Under his finger, the side of Clint's mouth twitched with something that had all the hallmarks of indulgent amusement, but was nothing of the kind. It made Tony's stomach hurt again.

"Pretty sure you're a couple of decades too late for that," Clint mumbled.

"No, no, come here," Tony protested when Clint tried to pull away again, because he needed to get that godawful look off Clint's face, and he was Tony bloody Stark, he could fix _anything_.

Clint caught Tony's wrist before it touched his skin. He guided it down to rest on the mattress. "Get some sleep, Stark."

The door banged open and Tony flinched awake. He winced sharply when a bolt of fiery pain shot up his leg, slicing through the fuzziness of drugged sleep. Cold sweat scampered over his skin and he froze in place until he could breathe again.

"Get up," Colorless told Clint as he walked in. "Over there." He motioned with the gun in his hand towards the wall.

Without a word, Clint got up and limped to the opposite wall. He had to pass close to one of the goons, and the man waited until he had almost passed, then went for the back of his knee to trip him. But Clint must have expected it, must have kept all of them in his peripheral vision, because he sidestepped it and avoided being pushed off balance. He locked eyes with the guy for two long seconds, but didn't engage further, and Tony was grateful for his restraint. Neither of them needed more pain right now.

"You know what's good for Stark, you won't move," Colorless told Clint.

Tony watched one of Colorless's men lift the now empty IV bag from the stand next to the cot. Tony hissed out a curse as the guy yanked the IV out of his hand with a sharp tug on the plastic tubing.

"You need to work on your bedside manner, Nurse," he muttered and rubbed at the bleeding puncture wound on his hand.

The guy paused, turned back and leaned close enough that their noses almost touched. "Want me to work on it right now?" he asked.

Tony resisted the urge to pull his head back and gave the guy a strained grin. "I'm kind of busy right now. But if you call my assistant I'm sure we can pencil you in. I think I have an opening in a decade or so."

The man grinned back. "Looking forward to it."

"Six hours have passed," Colorless informed them. "Ergo, no more painkillers for Stark." He pointed at Clint. "Next milestone, you're up. And I'll make damn sure Babbit joins us for it."

Clint didn't move, didn't answer. Eventually Colorless must have grown tired of waiting for a reaction, because he ordered the IV grabber to take the IV stand, then herded his men out. "Later," he said over his shoulder and tipped an imagined hat before following them out. The door closed heavily behind them, the locking mechanism clicking into place. It had taken all of thirty seconds.

"Guess they didn't get any money," Tony sighed.

Clint crossed the floor silently and sat down again. "Guess not." He sighed. "Do me a favor, Tony. Watch your mouth, okay? Those guys are bad news."

"Yeah. I picked up on that. Who's Babbit?"

Clint reached over Tony and checked the bandage again. "Just another asshole."

"No shortage of those around here, that's for sure," Tony mumbled. He rubbed at the puncture wound that wept a thin line of blood down the top of his hand. "Bye, bye drugs," he sighed. "But they were shit anyway," he told Clint. "I'm not sure it'll make a difference."

A few hours later, Tony knew exactly how wrong his assessment had been.


	7. Chapter 7

NOTE: Please beware that bad _bad_ things happen to our boys in this chapter again. Heed the warning, people.

The painkillers had worn off. The ache in Tony's leg had turned into a deeper, duller pain within hours, and he regretted the 'crying like a little girl' comment, because he was about two seconds away from starting to do just that. He gritted his clenched teeth and tried to relax through the shivers that came and went without reason or warning. Jesus fucking Christ. Getting shot sucked so bad.

Clint had kept feeding him more water, a little at the time, but last time he had held out the bottle and Tony had taken a sip, the water had come back up. Most of it ended up on the floor, but his shirt and the mattress hadn't escaped completely scot free. Tony knew he should be disgusted about pretty much lying in his own vomit, but honestly? If the pain would subside, he would gladly roll in it.

"How are you holding up?" Clint was seated cross-legged on the floor. He had moved a few feet away, out of the puke radius, no doubt, but an upside of that was that at least now Tony wasn't just seeing the back of his head like he had when Clint had been seated against the cot.

"Not great," Tony admitted. "I wish they'd hurry up and get us out of here already. Like, yesterday. How many hours have passed, you think?"

"There's still time." Clint ran his fingers across the floor, drawing something in the dust. Time was running out. They both knew it. Tony's eyes flitted to Jackson's body and his stomach twisted. He wouldn't let Clint end up there. He _wouldn't_.

"You should make a break for it next time they come."

Clint shook his head. "I wouldn't get ten feet. I could definitely take Whippet—"

"Who?"

"Mr. Sunshine. Cortes's lead asshole? White-blonde, skinny? Bit of an Aryan Brotherhood vibe about him."

Ah. Colorless. "Whippet. Suitable name."

"We haven't exactly been properly introduced, I just think he looks like one." Clint brushed his hands clean and rested them in his lap. He looked up at Tony. "I could take him. Easily. Most of his guys, too. But they're smart. At least two of them always stay out of range, so even if I get one of them after taking down Whippet, the other one would drop me."

Tony realized he was right. They always positioned themselves around the room, never too close to one another. "We'll have to figure something out. You have to get out."

"We both have to get out." He didn't say, _I'm not leaving you here_ , but it was plain as day in the stubborn set of his shoulders.

Tony sighed. "I can't give them what they want."

"I know."

"I'm not lying," Tony pressed, desperate to make Clint understand that, believe that. "I'm one hundred percent locked out. Pepper's an intelligent woman, I have no doubt she's working on a way around it as we speak, but JARVIS is programmed to stop her at every possible turn. And she may be smart, but I'm smarter."

Clint nodded.

"I'd give it to them if I could." He willed Clint to meet his eyes, but Clint's attention was back on his hands. "You know I would."

"Yeah," Clint said quietly. "I know."

"Okay, so let's brainstorm here." Tony twisted to face Clint more, and he couldn't quite contain the sharp, short sound that the pain caused. "Motherfucker," he groaned shakily. When he was reasonably sure his voice wouldn't wobble any longer he cleared his voice and continued. "I'll distract them. Get their attention off you."

Clint shook his head again. "They'll hurt you worse."

"Maybe. But they won't kill me, and I'm not gonna let them—" Tony swallowed the gravel that seemed to rise in his throat. "You need to get out. Now."

"There's still time," Clint said again.

"There _isn't_ still time!" Tony snapped at him, fear tipping over into flash-fire anger. "In a while they're gonna come in here and they're gonna kill you, Barton. _Kill. You_. And I'm sorry for being selfish, but I don't want to have to see you join him!" He stabbed his finger at Jackson.

"Trust me, I have no desire to join him."

"Then do something!"

Clint's head came up, his eyes mirroring Tony's anger. "What the hell do you want me to do? Huh? If I saw a way that was anything other than straight out suicide, trust me, I would take the chance to get us out—"

"Forget _us_! You're the one up to slaughter here. Not me. They still need me if they want anything out of this motherfucking mess."

Clint opened his mouth to answer when Tony heard what he'd been dreading for what felt like forever. Steps down the hallway outside. Tony's mouth went desert dry. Clint climbed stiffly to his feet.

"You have to," he told Clint again, desperate. Not a cell in his body wanted to be left behind, but he was pretty sure he was right, they wouldn't kill him. Not until they understood, really _understood_ that they weren't getting anything out of this.

Colorless was first inside again, ahead of three other men who positioned themselves with enough distance that Clint wouldn't have a chance in hell of taking them all out before they killed him. How had he not noticed that before Clint pointed it out?

Colorless waited until the last man closed the heavy door. "You. Over there." He pointed at Clint, then at the floor in the middle of the room.

Again, Clint limped to the directed spot without a word. It was not like Clint at all, and Tony could only assume that he was either trying to protect Tony or he was hurt more than he let on. Or both.

Colorless turned his watered out eyes on Tony. "Your friends aren't very good at taking direction."

"Yeah, we get that a lot."

"Remember what Señor Cortes said when you were making your video performance?" Colorless rolled the r's of the name exaggeratedly. "Remember what he said would happen if we didn't get the money? He said, 'six hours and you lose your happy juice'. Well, six hours went by, and you lost your happy juice. Remember what would happen if another six hours passed?" Colorless gave Tony a toothy grin. "I think you do." He made a show of looking at a non-existing watch on his wrist. "And look at that. Six hours have passed."

He removed his gun from the holster by his side.

Tony raised his hand. "No, wait. Just wait—"

Colorless ignored him. "The boss has started getting cold feet, started making noises about settling for the publicity he'll get out of this, but that's not gonna fly for me. I work for money, and you're gonna make sure I get my share. I know your story about not having access to your money is a load of crap. There's no way you'd cut yourself off completely. There's a backdoor somewhere, and you are going to make use of it."

"I already told you, there is no backdoor _._ "

"Bullshit. I guess we'll just have to give you another incentive." He turned to Clint, but to Tony's surprise he didn't lift the gun. Instead he just spoke one word. "Strip."

When Clint didn't move immediately, Colorless snapped the black nightstick from the back of his belt and stalked to the cot. Fuck, no, Tony tried to curl up and away from the man, but the nightstick came down hard on his injured leg. He let out a hoarse scream and for a second, grayness overtook his vision. He was cold sweating and gasping when the pain backed away enough for him to take note of his surroundings again.

"You fucker," he sobbed, gripping his leg above the gunshot wound. His stomach churned sickly.

Clint silently pulled off the borrowed uniform shirt over his head, not bothering with the buttons. The undershirt came next. His face was grim as he got out of the pants and kicked them to the side and stood naked in the middle of the room.

Tony struggled to sit up, but slumped back down with a whimper as it jostled his leg. "Come on, guys," he managed to squeeze out past the tightness in his throat. "Don't do this, we can—"

"Shut up," Colorless told him.

Tony watched the asshole closest to Clint give him a rough shove in the back that sent him stumbling forward. Another shove and he was by the side of the cot again.

"On your knees," Colorless ordered. "But don't sit."

Clint got down on his knees next to the narrow cot, level with Tony's midsection. His face was expressionless, and another tendril of fear joined the writhing tangle in Tony's gut. Jesus Christ. Something bad was going to go down here, and whatever it was, he was either getting a front row seat to it, or he was going to be made a participant. He heard the air huff out of Clint's lungs as Colorless's boot sent him half sprawling over Tony. Clint managed to brace himself with one hand on the thin mattress, but the other came down on Tony's hip. The movement sent a fresh wave of pain up Tony's leg and he hissed sharply, his fingers digging deep into Clint's arm as he tried to keep him from moving.

Clint made to straighten up, but Colorless put his boot flat against Clint's flank and kept it there. "Stay."

Clint slowly lowered himself down again. He moved his hand from Tony's hip, reached across him and placed his palm flat against the mattress, holding himself up in an awkward half-lying position over Tony. Tony didn't move, hyper-aware of the naked skin of Clint's abdomen ghosting against his arm with every measured breath. Clint looked grim but not afraid, not like Tony felt now, not like Tony most certainly would have felt if he had been the one kneeling naked and vulnerable in this situation. In truth, Tony was fucking terrified.

Colorless kicked at Clint's bare legs. "Spread 'em."

"No, listen, listen," Tony said desperately. "Just because I can't get to it from here right now doesn't mean you're hosed. I mean, you realize you got your Santa, your fairy godmother, your every dream come true right here, right?" He pointed at himself. "Whatever he's paying you, I'll double it. Hell, I'll triple it. Just get us out of here and you'll be a rich man. It might take a while, but soon enough you could be drowning kittens in St. Martin or whatever the hell it is you do for fun."

Colorless smiled. "Know what? I'll give it some serious thinking about. And while I think about it, you're gonna behave, aren't you?" His steel-toed boot impacted with the side of Clint's thigh, clearly aiming the question at him, and Tony saw a twitch of pain cross Clint's face before it settled into neutral again. "Aren't you?" Colorless asked again. When Clint still didn't acknowledge him, he pulled his boot back again.

"Yes! Yes, he'll behave," Tony hurried to assure him. "He'll be a goddamn altar boy. Right? _Right_?" He dug his fingers into Clint's biceps.

"You make sure he does." Colorless holstered the gun and turned to his crew. "So. While I think about it long and hard, who's up?"

Tony stomach clenched painfully at the way everyone's attention zoomed in on Clint, kneeling naked by the side of the cot. There was no mistaking what that meant. "No, guys, guys, listen—"

"Shut up, Stark," Clint said, his low voice almost drowned by the loud but brief discussion between Colorless's men by the door. The discussion ended with the two of them facing each other, fists raised. But it wasn't a fighting stance and Tony stared disbelieving and horrified at them. Jesus Christ, this wasn't happening, they were _not_ standing there playing rock paper scissors to see who got first dibs with Clint.

But oh, yes, they were. The first round both of them chose 'rock'. The second round, the shorter of them gave a triumphant laugh when he stayed with 'rock' and the other chose 'scissors'. Colorless stepped aside with a sweeping gesture of his arm in the direction of the bed.

"Don't you fucking dare," Tony snarled as the man advanced on the cot, his hands already on the fly of his jeans. Tony tried to rise up on his elbow, but Clint's hand on his chest pushed him back again. _Stay down, stay cool._

Tony's heart pounded nauseatingly against his ribs. He made jokes about how Clint had the self-preservation drive of a lemming, but Tony knew full well that he had spent a decade plus doing SHIELD's dirtiest and most dangerous jobs, and he wouldn't have lasted long without a _very_ well-developed survival instinct. Which of course meant Clint had already run through every scenario here, had evaluated every possible outcome and settled on the strategy that carried the best odds of keeping them both alive. Tony clenched his hands into fists as he slumped back and hated this particular strategy with all his heart.

"Eyes on Stark," Colorless ordered Clint.

Clint craned his neck and peered at Colorless over his shoulder. "You have a thing for deep, meaningful gazing, don't you? Tell me, how do you feel about Piña Coladas and getting caught in the rain?"

 _Finally._ That was more like the Clint Tony knew.

The sass earned Clint another love tap from Colorless's boot. "Take your eyes off him and see what happens. And you," Colorless pointed at Tony with the nightstick, "that goes for you, too."

Tony glared coldly at him, but when Colorless lifted the nightstick high again, he quickly locked eyes with Clint. Clint looked back at him. Something dark simmered behind his steady eyes, something that told Tony that any acknowledgement of what was about to go down was unwelcome. Tony's throat felt like dust, and he swallowed drily as he tried to school his face. He could understand Clint not wanting to see horror or pity or anything even remotely similar mirrored back at him, could understand how pride might be the only thing left to hang onto right now, because there was not doubt what they were going to do. Tony nodded, more to himself than to Clint. He could do this. Yep. Eye contact. Keep his shit together. Easy peasy.

Only, not so easy peasy, because in his peripheral vision he saw the burly man who had won first prize approach, and his eyes moved without volition. He snapped his gaze back to where it needed to be and hoped his slipup had gone unnoticed. He had the feeling Colorless was just looking for an excuse to hurt either of them. The bastard seemed like that kind of person.

The man braced himself against the cot on both sides of Clint and got on his knees. Tony watched Clint's face go stony. He swallowed drily. Jesus Christ. This was happening. It was really happening. Right here. He wished fervently for the roar of the Hulk, for the sound of explosions and doors being broken down, but as seconds ticked by he knew there would be no last-minute rescue this time. Tony's churning stomach tightened painfully as Clint tensed and hissed, baring his teeth in a tight grimace of pain. A few long seconds passed, then Clint pivoted forward over Tony's chest. A sharp sound escaped him and his hand shot forward to brace himself against the wall. The cot gave a metallic creak of stressed joints.

Someone laughed as the guy pulled Clint back, only to shove him forward again. This time Clint clenched his teeth and didn't make a sound as he was rocked forward.

"I will find you," Tony promised hoarsely, and God, it was sickening, it was nightmare inducing to not being able to look away. "All of you. I will pour every waking moment and every last cent into it, and when I find you I will _end_ you."

The cot moved with every thrust and Tony felt sick, felt cold and heavy, and his stomach lurched like he was motion sick. Anxiously waiting for them to bring Clint back had given him plenty of time to panic about what they had been doing to his teammate. He'd been pretty right on the money about the general theme, but as sickening as imagining Clint's assault had been, nothing could compare to this. There was no way to redirect his mind from this, because it came with the touch of sweaty, goose bumped skin against his arm where Clint was holding himself up, with the harsh sound of the cot's joints squeaking, of unsuccessfully held back sounds of pain and the lewd slap of skin on skin. This time Tony had to watch Clint watch him while he was being violated, and there was no getting away from it.

The guy's hands came down on Clint's back, shoving down, and Clint's chest pressed down against Tony for a moment before he managed to lift himself back up an inch. A second later, another thrust made him almost topple forward, and the sound of pain that tore out of him would haunt Tony's dreams for years. Clint's head dropped, his eyes squeezed tightly shut as the guy drove him forward again. Out of the corner of his eye, Tony saw Colorless move, and a second later the nightstick came down cruelly on his knee. With a shriek he jack-knifed up against Clint, the sudden pain driving him into reckless motion and spikes of jagged agony shot through his thigh. Clint's head snapped up.

Tony slumped backwards with a harsh sob and blinked against the wetness in his eyes, desperate to keep Clint in view. His stomach churned, sour and sick, and for a moment he was sure he was going to throw up. Wet warmth trickled down the side of his leg. Something had torn open.

"Maybe we should have him suck Stark," one of Colorless's guys suggested. "He wouldn't even have to move."

Tony was shaking his head before he realized it. No. Please. He didn't want that.

"No? Don't you want him sucking your cock? He's had real good practice taking it deep."

The man pumped into Clint with single-minded focus. Again. Again. Again. Clint's eyes didn't leave Tony's, but from one moment to the next, Clint wasn't really looking at him any longer. He realized Clint was looking straight through him, his focal point somewhere far behind Tony. But this time it wasn't the frighteningly vacant look from when he had been brought back to Tony that first time, no, this time Tony recognized a very deliberate shift of focus. Clint was still here, and god help him, Tony was shamefully grateful for it, he was _grateful_ Clint hadn't retreated into himself, away from the humiliation and the pain and left Tony alone there. He took a deep, shaky breath and tried to do the same, tried to look without seeing, because it felt like it would be a kindness to be able to say that yes, I was looking at you while they hurt you, but I wasn't watching. Not really. He concentrated on conjuring up the doors to his lab at an imaginary horizon beyond Clint, and for a few seconds it worked. Then he felt a calloused hand run over his arm, across his chest. His brain auto-focused like a high-end camera. His heart stuttered as he glanced down and saw that the hand belonged to the grinning bastard who was still fucking into Clint. Tony tried to sink further into the mattress. Don't touch me. Don't. He didn't think he said it out loud, but maybe he did, because suddenly Clint was moving, his passivity gone in a heartbeat, and he shoved himself up sharply, slamming his elbow backwards. The guy fell away, ending up on his bare ass on the floor, his fat cock flopping between his legs. Despite the horror of the situation the sight struck Tony as funny. The laugh sounded more like a sob.

"Don't you fucking touch him," Clint seethed. "He's hurting already. Leave him alone."

Seconds later Clint was wrestled down over Tony again by three pairs of hands and a brutal knee to his back. There was a dull, fleshy sound as Colorless's nightstick impacted. He swung again. Unthinking, Tony raised his hands, trying to block it from coming down on Clint again. The nightstick struck his outstretched fingers, and he felt something snap. With a cry he cradled his hand close to his chest.

"Don't," Clint wheezed. "Stark. Don't."

Chest to chest, he could feel Clint's ragged breathing. And Tony wanted to fucking weep from the pain and the horror and the goddamn helplessness as the guy got up from the floor and shoved the others away. He rammed his knee hard into Clint's ribs, then dragged him back up when Clint curled sideways around the pain with a ragged groan.

"Don't you even twitch, or I promise I will punch fist Stark dry right here right now," the guy growled and grabbed the back of Clint's neck, pressing him down on top of Tony who just barely got his injured hand out of the way. The guy waited for several seconds, and when Clint didn't move from his prostrate position across Tony, he let go. "Hands on your back," he ordered.

Clint didn't lift his head, just clumsily brought his hands to his back.

They didn't tie him up, just made him hold his hands behind his back. If it had been rough before, it was nothing compared to the way the guy pounded into Clint now, every thrust of his hips punctuated by a string of obscenities directed at them both. With Clint's upper body draped heavily across Tony now, every little movement brought more pain, and Tony squeezed his eyes shut and desperately tried to keep his injured leg from moving, but it was like being stabbed. Every shove that had Clint shifting, meant more agony, and thank God the looking into each other's eyes thing seemed to be off the table, because Tony didn't think he could make himself do it anymore.

Through the haze of his own pain, he heard a dull sound. He cracked his eyes open and saw Clint's head hitting the wall with every thrust. Tony shakily reached out and cupped his good hand over the top of Clint's clammy forehead, a buffer against the cold concrete wall. He closed his eyes again. It wasn't much, but at least there was something he could do for Clint.

A moment later, Clint let out a short, desperate sound, scrambling forward, almost climbing on top of Tony, and Tony screamed as the pain increased exponentially. He shoved blindly as one of Clint's hands came down heavily on his leg. _No, stop._ G _et off. Get off, get off, get off._ He pulled and clawed at Clint, fingers and nails digging deep into the already bruised skin, and there wasn't a thought in his head, it was all _pain_. One more red hot wave of pain washed over him as Clint was hauled backwards again. Another one of those unholy sounds was wrenched out of his teammate, and for a small, fleeting moment Tony was grateful for the distraction that was his own pain, because he didn't want to think too closely about what they were doing to Clint to make him sound like that.

Another shove. Another explosion of pain.

Again.

Again.

He knew Clint couldn't help it, was hurting as bad as he was, but every move hurt, every thrust _hurt_. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt, and Tony didn't give a flying fuck that he was sobbing loudly, begging for it to stop. Just fucking finish already, he prayed fervently. Finish and get the hell off. Please. Just finish.


	8. Chapter 8

"Barton."

Clint blinked the concrete wall in front of him into focus.

"Come on, Barton, come back over here. _Please_."

Tony, his mind supplied. That was Tony.

"Man, you have _got_ to stop doing this to me," Tony's voice behind him was tight, bordering on desperate. "Clint?"

"Yeah." It came out hoarse, barely audible, and Clint cleared his throat. "Yeah," he said again, louder. Fuck. Everything hurt. And he was so damn _cold._

"Oh, thank God. I thought your skull had caved in with the way that bastard slammed it into the ground."

Clint tried to orient himself. He was on the floor, on the other side of their cell. He had no recollection of getting there. With a groan he uncurled slowly. His breath caught when the movement triggered a renewed and intensified cascade of pains. "How long was I out?" He looked down at his hands and realized he was clutching the undershirt to his chest in a death grip.

"I don't know. Four, five minutes? Felt like fucking forever."

Clint rolled onto his back and held up the shirt above him as he tried to figure out which way was up and which way was down on the damn thing. His hands weren't shaking, but felt shivery and clumsy, and it took two tries for him to navigate the fabric and thread his arms through the arm holes. He pulled the shirt over his head and tugged it down.

He used his foot to drag the pants closer. Bending forward to get his feet into the bunched up pants was not pleasant, but he managed to tug them up to his knees. With a not-quite suppressed groan he lay back down again and lifted his hips, pulling them all the way up. The fabric clung and caught on the wetness on his skin, and he sorted the sensation into the category of things that wasn't in his best interest to think too hard about right at this second.

"Status?" Tony asked.

Clint got to his feet and limped slowly back to the cot. "Breathing, walking, talking." That was a win right now, Clint figured. You?" He groaned as he knelt down next to Tony. His aching joints felt rusty and stiff.

Tony slumped back onto the mattress. "Still shot. Now with the added pleasure of having a finger bending in a way a finger shouldn't ever bend." He was clutching his left hand to his chest, and had cupped his right one lightly on top of it, covering it.

"Let me see." Clint held out his hand, waiting for Tony to show him the injured hand.

Tony lifted his good hand an inch, angling his fingers away, and Clint saw what he meant by 'bending like it shouldn't bend'. The bones of the middle finger were definitely not aligned the way they should be, and the digit was swollen to twice the normal size, already dark blue and purple and red. Clint leaned closer, reached forward, but Tony angled his upper body away protectively.

"No. Don't touch."

Clint dropped his hand. There wasn't much he could do, anyway. Even if he had something to use for a splint, a break like that needed to be set by someone with access to an x-ray machine. It might need surgery, too, if the break wasn't clean. Tony watched him warily for a few seconds like he expected Clint to grab it anyway, and if Clint hadn't been so exhausted he would probably have been a little offended by the fact that Tony apparently thought he was that big of an ass. He looked Tony's leg over instead, and ignored the way Tony still covered the broken finger protectively even as he relaxed and lay back down flat on his back again.

"I think I tore it open," Tony mumbled.

Redness had bloomed large and wet across the bandage on his thigh, and this was pretty damn bad. Clint didn't know how much more Tony could afford to lose. He face was already a few shades whiter than healthy, his skin clammy-looking.

Clint sighed and got to his feet. He hobbled to the door and pounded his fist on it. "Hey! Assholes!"

"No! Are you crazy? Don't make them come back!"

Clint leaned his forehead against the cool metal surface of the door and waited a few seconds, ignoring Tony's continued protests behind him. He didn't particularly want them to come back, either, but he had to do this. "Stark's bleeding bad," he shouted. "If you want your leverage alive you should probably do something about that."

Tony fell abruptly silent behind him, his objections cut off mid-word. Nothing like being told you're bleeding out to shut you up.

It took longer than expected, but finally the door opened and three items were tossed in before it closed again. A roll of gauze, a surgical pad, and a roll of surgical tape. Clint peeled the tape from Tony's skin and carefully lifted the bloody dressing. The wound looked red and puffy. It was still weeping blood, but not as much as Clint had feared. He was as careful as he could while he redressed the wound, but Tony was still sweating when he was done, tremors running deep in his muscles.

Clint wiped his hands on the front of his pants and took another inventory of his own aches and pains. His head ached with the deep, cruel flavor that came with even a mild concussion. His back hurt. His shoulder too. His ass. He spent a moment properly cataloging the sharp, bright pain that spoke of multiple instances of torn skin and muscle, and the duller, deeper ache that expanded whenever he moved, that stretched up towards his lower back and wrapped unforgivingly around his tail bone. The slick feeling as he shifted told him he was probably still bleeding, but at least they hadn't fucked him with the nightstick this time. Thank God for small favors, because no matter how painful this last round had been, the risk of outright perforation was significantly lower from their cocks than from having the nightstick shoved up his ass dry again. Sepsis wasn't on his top list of ways he wanted to die.

Clint took his seat on the floor and wished for more water. He was getting pretty dehydrated by now. He coughed into his sleeve, grimacing at the pain. His throat still felt sore from the fingers that had been shoved down it that first time. He had taken a few sips of the water bottle they had left with Tony, but Tony had drunk most of it. With that kind of blood loss he needed it.

It didn't take many minutes for Tony to start up a low monologue that mostly revolved around their hosts and their accommodations, and Clint had always been impressed with the way Tony could say the same thing in a thousand different ways and never sounding like he was repeating himself. His voice rose and fell as he bitched and complained, sharp-tongued and acerbic, but he couldn't quite keep the brittle undertone from his voice. Clint knew it was nerves, was fear, was pain and fatigue, and Tony was dealing the only way he knew how to. He tried to stay tuned into Tony's diatribe, tried to add a few words here and there, but when he suddenly blinked and lifted his head, he realized Tony had stopped talking, and from what little his brain had apparently recorded on auto-pilot, that had happened quite a while ago.

Clint estimated at least another six hours had passed with a wide margin when the overhead lights went out again. When they came back on a few hours later, Tony was curled up tight, trying to hug some warmth back into himself.

His skin was hot under Clint's hand.

Tony hated.

He hated being shot. He hated being sick. He hated being scared and hurt and stuck in this godawful room, but more than anything right now, he hated having to watch them drag Clint away again, and all he could think of was that this would be the time he wouldn't make it, this would be the time they killed him. On purpose or not.

Tony was so relieved he was close to tears when they brought him back, bloodied and bruised, _more_ bloodied and bruised, but alive. But he knew immediately that something had happened. He didn't know what, but _something_ had definitely happened, something worse than before, because the first words out of Clint's mouth when the door closed behind their captors was,

"We're getting out of here." His hoarse voice was muffled behind the arm he had thrown over his face. He hadn't moved from where they had dropped him on the floor.

"Are you okay?" Tony propped himself up on his elbow. He cursed under his breath as his leg protested. "I mean… oh, fuck it, you know what I mean."

"We're getting out," Clint repeated.

"Yeah, you won't hear any arguments from me there. Are you bleeding?" Clint rolled slowly to his knees and after a pause he started slowly towards the cot on all fours. Apparently Tony wasn't going to get anything out of him on that subject right now. "If we're getting out, do you at least have a plan, Barton?"

"Yes."

"Is it a good one?"

"No." Clint's lip had split open again and blood had run down his chin. One of his front teeth was broken at a sharp, jagged angle. He settled on the floor next to the cot again, rested his forehead heavily against the mattress. A tangled tuft of hair at the back of his head was matted with dark blood.

"But we're going with it anyway?"

"Yes."

Tony wanted to ask 'what did those bastards do to you', wanted to know what had been broken so he could fix it, but he just said, "Okay, then."

"Tired of being entertainment for these bastards," Clint mumbled.

Tony was about to say 'you and me both', but he managed to catch the words before they left his mouth, because sure, he'd been shot and his finger had been broken, but not for entertainment value. This far, Clint's treatment had seemed to be little but.

Next time the door opened, they came for Tony, and if he hadn't felt so sick and been in so much pain, he would probably have panicked a bit more about what was in store for him as they put him in a wheelchair and rolled him down the hallway.

Turned out they hadn't collected him for a torture session, instead they took him to the same room as before to record another proof of life. He blinked against the hard spotlight behind the camera and this time they didn't make him read anything, just had him hold up a tablet with something he assumed showed today's date. Cortes talked and talked and talked to the camera, but all Tony could think of was what were they doing to Clint? Would he be there when Tony came back? What if they had taken him and he never came back.

This time he suspected he actually did cry when he saw Clint in there, tense and eyeing the guards warily as they half-carried, half-dragged Tony in and more or less dropped him in Clint's arms. Before they left, they gave Tony two of something that looked suspiciously like Advil gel caps and a bottle of water. Apparently they didn't want him to die from a fever just yet. Clint helped him sit down, and Tony remained on the edge of the cot for a long time, silently resisting Clint's attempts to get him to lie down, because no, he couldn't move right now, he just needed to sit there and breathe for a while and not move because moving hurt. He was just going to rest right there. Just for a while. The fingers of his good hand clutched at Clint's shirt.

It was just because Tony was so goddamn dizzy.

That was all.

The gel caps must have worked some of their OTC magic, because when Tony eventually dared to let Clint help him lie down, it was a little less horrible than he had expected. The fever chills retreated somewhat, dropped to a level that didn't reduce him to a shivering ball of misery every time they hit. Oh, make no mistake, he was still a ball of misery, but at least he wasn't a shivering one.

Tony dozed. It wasn't proper sleep, too fitful and shallow to be called that, and he kept surfacing every few minutes to crack his eyes open and close them again when he saw the top of Clint's head where it rested on his folded arm next to Tony. At some point Tony must have fallen deeper into sleep, because suddenly he was dreaming. He dreamed of driving his Maserati down the sundrenched PCH at breakneck speed, laughing as the car shimmied skittishly, half a breath from spinning out as he took a curve too fast. He dreamed of pressing his palm against Jarvis's warm one, his small hand only half the size of Jarvis's. He dreamed of dark rooms and cold caves and woke up shivering again.

Clint was watching him, and Tony got the uneasy feeling he had said something in his sleep, moaned or cried or something equally cringeworthy, but Clint didn't say anything, just kept watching for another few seconds, then put his head back down.

Tony reached for the water bottle on the floor by the bed, but his hand was clumsy and all he managed was to knock it over. "Goddammit," he mumbled and squeezed his eyes shut. Why did everything have to be so damn hard? All he wanted was some water.

He heard Clint shift, and then felt his arm slid in under Tony's shoulders. He was carefully helped up to half-sitting. Clint handed him the bottle, but Tony had only drunk all of three sips when he felt his stomach clench. He pushed the bottle back at Clint and laid back down. With a sigh he scrubbed his good hand over his face. "So, this plan of yours. What is it?" He realized he hadn't actually asked.

"Kill enough of them to get out of here, then get out of here."

Tony stared at the ceiling. "You're right, that is a horrible plan." He looked up at Clint and gave him a grin that felt horribly fake. "Let's do it," he said.

"I need a distraction."

"What kind?"

"Doesn't matter, just something that gets their attention off me for a few seconds."

Tony glanced at the lifeless shape of Jackson on the other side of the room. "We're gonna have to leave him," he said quietly.

"Yeah." Clint didn't ask who Tony was talking about.

They're moving us, Tony realized, as the two of them were herded through the maze of narrow hallways and rooms. Probably getting nervous about being tracked down as time dragged on. His arm was draped heavily over Clint's shoulder, and he was hobbling along as well as he could, which, in truth, wasn't very well at all, he felt faint and nauseous with pain, and the fever ran chills down his overheated body that made him want to curl up on the floor and never get up.

Three guards. A man Tony couldn't remember seeing before headed their little procession, with Clint and Tony coming after. Whippet plus one took up the rear. Tony's shuffling feet caught on some miniscule unevenness on the floor and he grunted as pain lit up his leg again. Unthinkingly he clenched his bad hand and let the groan slide into a moan. Play it up, Clint had told him. Make them think you're weaker than you are. Make them underestimate you. Tony didn't have to play _anything_ up, he was weak and sick and just about incapacitated, but sure, he'd play it up, he was good at that. Clint was doing it, too, moving beside Tony with nothing near his usual smooth fluidity, and Tony wanted desperately to think that most of it was Clint giving the assholes a truly stellar performance, but he knew that far too much was far too real.

He lifted his head a fraction as they had to step across a high threshold, looking for all the world like a bulkhead door onboard a ship, and for a moment Tony was sure they'd already been moved, had been transported somewhere else while he was out, and the thought brought a cold shower of anxiety over him, but then he remembered that the room they had left hadn't changed, so no, they hadn't been moved. Dammit brain, keep up. You can check out when we get back home.

He made an attempt to concentrate on their surroundings, on trying to take in any details that could be useful later. Concrete walls. Socket outlets. He glanced at the door handle and the lock as they passed through. This one had an electronic lock. As had the next door they went through, and the rooms that lined the passageway after that. This was obviously another part of the building, the rooms closes to theirs hadn't had electronic locks. Maybe this was some kind of electronic perimeter for the area where they had been kept.

Another hallway, another, and another. Right, left, left, right. Tony wondered if it was some kind of strategy to keep them disoriented, but decided he didn't much care at the moment, because he was growing lightheaded and dizzy. He was just about to humiliate himself by asking for a short break when the guy up front came to a stop in a small, dimly lit room.

Tony blinked owlishly at the cramped room. It looked more like a hallway that had been widened than an actual room, narrowly rectangular with doors at each end, but there was enough space for an old faded couch with a small side table along one wall, and a one-foot wide ledge bolted at the other like a very rudimentary bar counter. Two barstools sat pushed in under the ledge, and Tony thought the room must be used as a rec area of some kind, because empty bottles lined the floor by the far wall, and number of overfilled ashtrays and greasy pizza boxes littered the small table. A number of full and half-full bottles stood lined up on the counter. No doubt low-quality and high-proof. Three dirty shot glasses were overturned in front of them.

Cortes waited at them on the other side of the room with his hands folded in front of him. He looked haggard and exhausted. Lead guy sidled up to stand behind Cortes's shoulder while Whippet shouldered past Tony, who lost his one-footed balance and stumbled heavily against Clint.

He had to grip at Clint with both hands to stay on his feet. "Son of a bitch," he ground out, half bent over, forehead pressed against the shirt over Clint's collarbone.

Clint's hands gave him a one-second squeeze. "Here, hold onto this," he told Tony and guided his hands to the ledge.

If Tony hadn't been told to look for it, he would never have seen the tiny nod Clint gave him, more with his eyes than anything, and he suffered a blank moment of _'What, here? Now? Already?'_ , before he gave himself a mental shake. If this was the moment Clint had chosen, then this was probably as good as it was going to get. He didn't trust his own mental faculties to make a proper situational assessment right now anyway, so yeah, he was going to follow Clint's lead.

He watched Clint turn to Cortes, shifting slightly and it didn't escape Tony that the movement placed him more solidly between Whippet and Tony. Setting up the pieces, getting his angles, and sure, the guy was a master player, but fuck, he had three people in front of him and one behind him that he needed to take down for this to work. And all of them were probably armed.

"Where are you taking us," Clint demanded of Cortes, and Tony knew Clint didn't give a shit what the answer was, he was just keeping up the pretense of relative hostage normalcy until Tony could get his act together.

Tony heard the door close behind them, and he gave Whippet's friend a wary glance over his shoulder as the guy came up and took position five feet behind him. Tony tried to keep the tension from his body, tried to not give anything away, but his mouth had gone dry and fuck, the odds were not great here, and he really didn't want to die here. But he just had to trust that Clint had the same feelings on the subject, and trust that he would get them through. He took a regularly paced, regularly deep breath, even though he wanted to inhale as deeply as he could, to steel himself for what was going to happen.

Okay, Stark. Come on. It's show time. 'Create a distraction', was what Clint had repeated when they'd talked about it again. 'Get their attention off me for two seconds, then get out of the way.' Tony had protested the 'get out of the way' part, but as Clint had pointed out with very little in the form of sugarcoating, in the shape Tony was in he would be about as much help as a wet kitten, and for Clint to get the upper hand, he needed to not have to think about Tony getting in the way.

On the other side of the room, Cortes had started to answer Clint's question when Tony set in motion his mind-blowingly high-tech distraction. He opened his mouth and started howling like a banshee.

Cortes and Whippet's heads both snapped away from Clint as Tony let himself fall forward against the barstool, hands wrapping around the edges of the seat. He kept screaming, and his broken finger helped him add a few more decibels to the sound. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Clint shift his feet into a more balanced stance. Cortes started turning back to Clint, but by then it was already too late. Clint delivered a hard punch to his throat, following up with a sharp side-kick to the knee. Even as Cortes's leg gave way, Clint's hand snaked forward and grabbed the gun from his shoulder holster, thumbed off the safety, chambered a round in one second flat, and put a rapid, controlled one-two in the head of the goon behind Cortes's shoulder.

Tony flinched at painful twin blasts, and the world around him went flat, only an insistent ringing tone in his ears remained clear, everything else had gone muted, but he didn't freeze. As Clint turned the gun on Whippet, Tony shifted his grip on the barstool. He did his best to keep his injured finger out of the action as he hoisted it straight up into the air and repositioned his hand on the legs before swinging it around in an arc. It impacted with the guy behind him with a satisfactory crash, and he must have hit the jackpot, because the man slammed into the side of the bar counter with a boneless thud and dropped to the floor. Tony, with only one good leg to stand on, couldn't counter the momentum of the swing and the added weight of the barstool, and it carried him around and down. Hard. The world went razor sharp for a fraction of a second, then just about whited out when he landed hard on his right side, his bad leg caught under him, instinctively trying to break his fall with his hands.

He found himself curled up on the floor, unable to breathe right for first four or five attempts. Get up, get up, get up, his brain screamed at him. When he finally convinced his body to move, to roll over, he saw Cortes on his knees, clawing at his throat on the other side of the small room. At the same time, Clint twisted in under Whippet's arm, and Tony had suffered through enough training sessions in hand-to-hand with the mayhem twins to recognize the move. Get inside the person's grasp, immobilize, incapacitate. Clint grabbed Whippet's forearm and locked Whippet's gun, then in one seamless, violent move he turned like he was spinning into the arms of a dance partner, positioning himself with his back against Whippet's chest and slammed his elbow backwards and up. There was a sick crunch of teeth breaking as it impacted with Whippet's mouth.

Clint twisted Whippet's arm sharply and the gun dropped to the ground, clattering in and disappearing under the ratty couch, and Whippet staggered back, blood flowing freely down his chin. That was not the gun Clint has taken from Cortes, Tony noted dimly, this one was metallic gray instead of black. For a moment he wondered where that gun had gone, why Clint hadn't simply shot Whippet. The only reason he could think of was that the gun had run out of rounds.

Whippet backed up a few feet, getting his bearings. He spat blood and white little fragments of broken teeth on the ground. Behind the two, Tony could see Cortes move, one hand braced on the floor, the other still at his throat. His face was dark red. No sound came from his open mouth. Then Whippet took another few step backwards, settling into something that looked like a boxer's stance, and it placed him within Tony's reach. Tony managed to twist and his foot connected with satisfying force with the side of Whippet's kneecap. Whippet went down with a howl and Tony joined in, because jarring his body like that, fuck, it hurt.

Whippet dragged himself up with a hoarse string of curses, but Clint was advancing, and he apparently decided he couldn't afford to focus all attention on Tony, as much as he clearly wanted to. "I'll get back to you later," he promised, his words indistinct around his broken teeth before turning back to Clint.

Tony dragged himself along the floor the few feet to the guard he'd decked with the barstool and started patting him down quickly with his good hand, one eye still on Whippet, in case the guy were suddenly to lose all traces of survival instinct and return to Tony, presenting his unprotected back to Clint. Tony went through all the pockets, hoping for the cool metal of a gun, but all he found was a knife. A pretty brutal looking knife with a dull black finish and a serrated blade, but all in all, Tony would still rather have scored a gun.

Clint had taken a few steps backwards, drawing Whippet away from Tony again, and was waiting with his hands passively by his side as Whippet limped closer. Neither of the two men paid any attention to Cortes who had made it to his feet and was now stumbling around, unseeing in his panic to draw a breath that couldn't get past his shattered larynx.

Whippet spat blood on the floor and wiped his forearm over his damaged mouth. "So, it's you and me again, sweetheart," he growled.

Clint didn't answer, just kept watching.

Then Whippet made his move. Clint waited until Whippet was almost on top of him and then, in a move that belied his injuries and the pain Tony knew he must be in, he twisted smoothly out of the way and followed up with a brutal punch to Whippet's kidney. Whippet stumbled and half-collapsed against the bar counter, panting for a few seconds before he pushed himself up. He tried again, and this time he succeeded to land a glancing blow before Clint managed to block it. Once again he was sent staggering backwards. It put him a bit too close for Tony's comfort, and he pulled his legs in. The movement must have caught Whippet's attention, because he half-turned and Tony saw something change in his eyes, and fuck, yep, there went the survival instinct. He lifted the knife in front of him as Whippet's eyes flickered sideways from Clint to Tony, and tried very hard to remember every single thing they'd attempted to teach him about defending himself with a knife, but all he came up with was an utterly terrifying blank.

Whippet lunged at him, and Tony knew he was going to die. Whippet would kill him right there on the spot, but then Clint rammed into Whippet's back and the two of them went head over heel past him. Clint rolled with the movement, and came up on his feet while Whippet went sprawling and came to a stop on his hands and knees by the wall. He was on his feet instantly, growling curses. Tony kept pushing himself away until he could get no further, until his back was pressed against the door they had entered through. Clint dodged another one of Whippet's furious attacks, then Tony watched him go low under a kick and drive his fist against the side of Whippet's already injured knee. Whippet gave a howl and almost went down again, but he grabbed the one remaining barstool and managed to stay on his feet. He was picking it up to hurl it, but never got the chance, because Clint body slammed him again.

Clint was inches shorter than Whippet, but more solidly built, and the impact drove Whippet into bar counter, his back hitting its sharp edge. His breath was forced out of him with a huff. A second later Clint's hand snaked past Whippet and his fingers wrapped around the neck of one of the liquor bottles standing on the counter. Tony ducked his head when the bottle shattered in a rain of alcohol and glittering, razor sharp shards as Clint smashed it against the edge of the counter. Whippet managed to catch his arm, but the advantage was momentary, because Clint drove his knee into Whippet's balls before feigning a sharp punch to Whippet's head with his left fist. Whippet raised his arm in automatic defense, and with that instinctual little motion, his life was forfeit.

Clint locked Whippet arm high and used his whole body to stab the razor-sharp end of the broken bottle deep into the soft tissue of Whippet's exposed armpit. With a growl Clint pulled the bottle out a fraction, then shoved it in one more time. Whippet eyes bulged in his head, his mouth hanging open in a stupid little 'o'. The bright red blood that gushed silently over Clint's hand told Tony something vital had been damaged.

Whippet stared at Clint, then slowly started tipping forward. Clint took his weight without a sound, and Whippet's head fell forward to rest on Clint's shoulder. The sound of their harsh breathing and the wet dripping of blood were all that was heard. Tony watched Whippet blink rapidly at him over Clint's shoulder like he couldn't make sense of what was happening.

Clint's bloody hand came to curl lightly around the back of Whippet's neck in a sick mimicry of intimacy. It rested there for a moment, then the grip tightened and a second later Whippet's eyes went round over Clint's shoulder as he jerked with a low, broken moan.

"How do you like that show, motherfucker?" Tony heard Clint rasp into his ear.

Whippet's mouth worked without sound and Clint held him for another couple of seconds, then simply stepped away and let him collapse forward. As he fell, Tony saw the massive blood stain that was soaking through the front of Whippet's jeans. It was spreading very fast.

Without taking his eyes off Whippet and Clint, Tony tried to make it to his knees, but every single time he shifted a lance of agony shoot up his leg and the ground was spinning continuously now. He sat back down heavily. "Jesus Christ," he mumbled. "Jesus _Christ_."

Clint turned his eyes on him, jagged bottle still held loosely in his hand, and Tony closed his mouth. Clint tossed the bloody bottle into the corner and limped over to Cortes's henchman, passing Cortes who had fallen to the floor next to him, his face turning purple. Cortes's hand reached out jerkily, his fingers scrabbling desperately at Clint's leg. Clint didn't acknowledge him, just retrieved a knife and a gun from Henchman's jacket and stepped over him.

Clint handed the gun by the muzzle to Tony. "Anyone opens either door, you shoot first and ask questions later."

Tony managed to tear his eyes from the blood on Clint's hands and nodded jerkily. He pressed his back against the door and lifted the gun, pointed it at the door on the other side of the room.

Clint kneeled stiffly next to Whippet. "Let me tell you who I am. Actually, let me start by telling you who I'm not." He leaned forward and lifted the shredded, bloody shirt by Whippet's armpit with his finger, peering at what could be seen of the ruined flesh. "I'm not Tony Stark's bodyguard. I am not any version of an SI security guard. I am not anyone who's on Stark's payroll."

The bleeding man stared up at Clint.

"Barton, come on," Tony tried. "We have to get out of here. They will have heard the gunshots—"

"Who I am is a man with one hundred and forty-seven sanctioned kills on his record," Clint continued like he hadn't heard Tony. "And those are the sanctioned ones. Guess how many hasn't gone on my record?" When Whippet didn't answer Clint pressed his fingers hard into the wound. Whippet screamed. "Guess," he ordered coldly.

Whippet panted around the pain. He shook his head a fraction. "I don't know," he wheezed. Blood was pooling under him at a terrifying rate.

"Neither do I. I lost count. Now, here's what's going to happen. You have less than three minutes to live and I'm going to stay right here and watch you struggle to breathe as your chest cavity fills up with blood. You can feel it already, can't you?" Clint's voice was frighteningly calm. "And when you're dead, I will go home. I will rest and heal, and while I'm doing that I'm going to do some research. And then I am going to go look for your family."

Whippet choked on blood, his eyes wide. "No," he rasped, his hand grasping for Clint's arm.

"Barton, come on. Let's go," Tony begged. "Leave him."

"Please don't hurt her," Whippet rasped wetly.

"Oh, but I will." Clint's soft smile was a terrible thing.

Whippet turned his head, focused his eyes on Tony. Bright red blood foamed on his lips. "Please."

Tony wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, that he deserved all of this and more for what he did to Jackson, what he did to Clint, to Tony, but the words caught in his throat. He tried again to get his feet under him, but just couldn't, he _couldn't_. He sat down heavily again. He wasn't going anywhere without help. Without Clint's help. So there was nothing for him to do but wait for Whippet to die.

He kept the gun trained on the far door. His hand was shaking now.

It didn't take three minutes. He estimated it probably took no more than a minute before he stopped trying to talk, trying to beg, then another thirty seconds before his wheezing, increasingly labored breaths slowed and finally stopped.

Clint stayed crouched down by Whippet's side for another couple of seconds, then climbed stiffly and slowly to his feet. He took a step towards the far door, then suddenly stumbled a little and grabbed for the bar counter. All the smoothness and strength he had displayed during the fight were suddenly gone, like it had drained through the floor. He stood there breathing deeply, raggedly, and Tony was afraid to say a word. Clint wiped a hand over his face. Tony could see the shivers there. Clint's head bowed for a moment, then he took a deep breath and pushed away from the counter. He staggered a little, but put his hand against the wall for support. It left a dark red smudge on the naked concrete.

Tony almost started begging anew when Clint crouched down by Whippet again, his hands working on the man's trousers, but then he heard a familiar clink-zip of the belt being pulled out of its loops. Clint kneeled gracelessly in front of him, positioning himself so Tony could keep aiming at the far door. Tony clutched his injured hand close to his chest, his gun hand shaking. The weapon felt like it had tripled in weight.

Clint quickly slid the belt under Tony's leg. When Tony dared take his attention off the door for a one-second glance, Clint was looking up at him and a bone deep chill went through Tony. Not because he was looking at the stranger who had killed Whippet so brutally moments ago, who had promised things so terrible that Tony couldn't even think about them, but because he _wasn't_. He was looking at Clint now, a very tired and hurting version of the Clint he knew, and the shift was jarring, terrifying in all its instant smoothness. Now you see it, now you don't. Tony quickly returned his gaze to the door. Keep watching the door. Keep watching the door.

"This won't to be pleasant," Clint warned. Tony couldn't help the shrill sound of pain that escaped as Clint tightened the belt around his leg. "Can't leave it for too long, but I hope we'll be out of here soon. Here, let me have the gun."

Tony's fingers tightened around the grip. The gun started shaking harder.

From the corner of his eye, he could see Clint watching him for a beat, then he slowly reached over and pushed the barrel carefully towards the floor. He coaxed Tony's fingers loose and took the gun, and Tony numbly watched him pull the slide back to check the chamber, then drop the magazine to check the number of rounds, before pushing it back in. He slid it inside the lining of his pants at the back, then dragged himself to his feet with the help of the table.

"Let's go, Tony," he said with a sigh that sounded impossibly tired. He reached down and managed to get Tony up.


	9. Chapter 9

Even though Clint was careful, getting up was still pain on a level Tony didn't quite manage to handle gracefully. He clung to Clint as the hiss grew louder in his ears, and he suddenly got the sensation that his bones had gone strangely soft, jelly like. Grayness started to infringe on his vision.

Shit. Don't pass out. Don't pass out. _Don't_ pass out.

"We gotta move," he heard Clint say over the white noise.

Yeah. Sure. _Now_ you wanna move, Tony thought. He felt Clint hike him up a little. The vertigo faded a little and something occurred to him. He pulled at Clint's arm. "Wait, wait. Shouldn't we—? We should block that. Right?" He pointed at the door behind them.

Clint looked over his shoulder. "Fuck," he muttered, and Tony realized he had forgotten about it, too. Had missed the most obvious of things, and Jesus, if that wasn't a sign that Clint wasn't doing as well as his explosion of focused violence had indicated, then Tony didn't know what was. He braced his shoulder against the wall as Clint headed back to the door. The beep-beep-beep-click of the electronic lock was heard. Clint tested the handle. Locked.

"Cover your ears," he said. The gun was back in his hands. He put himself at an angle and aimed the gun downwards, lining the bullet trajectory up with the soft insides of the control box that burrowed into the wall.

Tony hunched over and put his hands over his ears, grateful for the warning, because his ears were still ringing faintly from last time. A bullet center mass put the control box out of its misery. Clint checked that the door was still locked before crouching down by the couch with a groan and fumbling for something under it. He straightened up with another gun in his hand.

Whippet's gun. So _that's_ where it had gone when the asshole had dropped it in the fight.

Clint quickly checked the gun over, then looked at Tony. "You up for handling this?"

Tony nodded, his hand pressed hard against the wall to keep himself up. He was dizzy and sick and felt like throwing up, but yes, he could handle it, _would_ handle it for a little while longer, because they were getting out of there now, and he would soon have a soft bed to lie in and good drugs and no more pain and blood. His own or anyone else's.

"Stark."

He blinked and realized Clint was still waiting for him to take the gun from his hand.

"Yeah," he croaked. "Yeah, okay." He took it.

"Safety is off. Be careful." Clint did another search of the bodies and made a triumphant sound as the came up with not one, but two cell phones. A second later he swore.

"Locked?" Tony asked.

"Locked," Clint verified grimly. But he stuffed both into his pocket before shifted the gun from his right hand to his left. He stepped in on Tony's left side, allowing Tony to slide his arm over his shoulders. Clint's free arm wrapped around Tony's waist, his fingers grabbing onto Tony's belt, and they stumbled from the room.

Tony felt warmth trickle down his leg. He glanced over his shoulder. Red drops on the floor trailed them like bloody bread crumbs. "They're gonna know where we went."

"Doesn't matter. They've got eyes on us, anyway."

Clint made a motion with his chin towards the ceiling, and Tony looked up. A small, dome-covered camera sat mounted in the ceiling. Clint closed the door behind them and destroyed the lock from the outside, effectively trapping the lone surviving asshole inside the small room. Tony didn't think for a second that this passage was the only way through, a bottle neck like that would be beyond stupid to rely on, but maybe it would slow their captors down a fraction.

The deserted corridor ended in a T-junction.

"Which way do we go?" Tony asked. He was already panting.

"This way." Clint took them right.

"How do you know?"

"I don't," he grunted as Tony stumbled and Clint had to take most of his weight. "But it doesn't seem like a great idea to stand around and discuss it right now."

Tony suddenly heard shouting. The sound was dulled by walls and doors, but there was no doubt the pursuit was on now. They hobbled through another heavy duty bulkhead-like door, controlled by yet another electronic lock. Clint pulled it closed behind them, but this time there wasn't a control box on their side to fuck up and nothing to physically jam the door closed with, so they had to leave it open and move on.

The corridor widened and the vibe changed from 'basement dungeon' to 'utilitarian'. It was a slightly more brightly lit. The floor was covered with scuffed and scarred linoleum. Closed doors lined the wall on the left. A few ancient-looking filing cabinets stood against the right one.

More shouting came from behind them. It sounded a lot closer.

"Cover our backs," Clint instructed as he ducked out from under Tony's arm.

Tony twisted and pointed the gun back in the direction they came from. His hand was nowhere near steady. He heard Clint try the first door behind him. Locked. Same with the second. But the third one opened, and Tony dared a quick glance over his shoulder. He saw a glimpse of a small claustrophobic room with an old desk and a computer screen, but no desktop or laptop was connected to it. Dammit. An internet connection would have been pretty great right about now. Clint moved down to the next door. The room inside looked the same as the previous one. The next too.

The last door was metal, sturdier. It too was unlocked and Clint stuck his head inside, looked around, then continued forward. A short distance later, the corridor turned ninety degrees to the left, and Clint stopped. He stopped, seemed to listen, then half-turned and put a finger to his lips in a 'quiet' gesture. His bare feet didn't make a sound as he approached the corner, gun ready. He crouched down a little, then waited by the corner for a few seconds before sticking his head out for a quick look.

He jerked back at the same time as a gunshot was heard. Tiny shards of concrete wall and dust went flying everywhere as a bullet hit the edge of the corner a foot higher than where Clint's head had been. Clint swore and stuck the gun around the corner and fired two quick shots blindly.

"That should slow them down a bit, knowing we're armed," he said as he scrambled back to Tony.

He had just reached Tony when the bulkhead door they had just passed and been forced to leave unlocked at the end of the corridor slammed open. Tony and Clint's guns fired simultaneously, and the man who had opened the door crumpled. Tony knew for certain that it wasn't his bullet that had taken him out.

Someone stuck an arm out and a bullet impacted one of the filing cabinets. A second later Tony's balance was all but lost as Clint dragged him backwards, and he almost went down as he had to put weight on his injured leg to stay on his feet. Then Clint swore, loud and sharp, and the next thing Tony knew he was curled up on his side on the cold floor, the world around him vague and unimportant as pain seared him to black ash, leaving him breathless and whimpering past clenched teeth.

"Sorry 'bout that," he heard Clint pant, but Tony's neurons were firing all wrong, saturated and overwhelmed by the pain, and the apology probably had something to do with Tony being on the floor, but he couldn't quite pin it down. He forced his eyes open and saw Clint kneeling next to him on the floor. "Shotgun," Clint said, and Tony still had no idea what he was talking about. "One of them had a shotgun. Had to get you out of the way fast."

A series of bangs made Tony jump, and it triggered a new wave of pain that made him hold his breath until it subsided bit. More bangs, harder and louder, and Tony landed a little more solidly in reality. He lifted his head and looked around as the details started coming back. They weren't in the corridor any longer, they were in a room. Fairly large. With a sturdy metal door.

Tony was still sorting out what happened when he realized he wasn't holding the gun any longer. "I lost the gun," he mumbled. He looked up at Clint, then down at his empty hand again. "I don't know… I don't know where it went." He honestly didn't know when it went AWOL. He had it, then something happened, and it was gone. He squinted at his hand, opened and closed it, like the gun would magically appear there again.

"Don't worry, I got it," Clint said and showed it to Tony before putting it on the floor next to his knees. "Can you sit up?"

Tony nodded and tried to keep the volume down when Clint helped him up. Clint's hands stayed on his shoulders as he tried to breathe through the vertigo, but his vision tunneled sharply. "I might… I might have to, uh…" Tony grabbed blindly at Clint. He heard Clint say something, but the sound came through muted and hollow, and then suddenly he was blinking up at Clint as he was lowered down to the floor again.

"Shit," he moaned.

Clint looked over his shoulder towards the door as more bangs and clanging were heard. "Stay there," he said and Tony was more than happy to do just that. He watched Clint drag a heavy desk to the door and put it across the opening, blocking it. He noticed that the electronic lock looked like it had been gutted, its cover torn off and a bundle of loose wires was hanging out like tiny electronic entrails. Clint must have done it, but just like with the gun, Tony had no recollection of it.

He looked around, took closer inventory of his surroundings as Clint pushed and dragged a filing cabinet to the door and used it to reinforce the blockade. He realized they must be inside the room Clint had checked before heading to the corner and being shot at. A bulky, dormant wall-to-wall console from what looked like the seventies or early eighties stood at the back of the room. Three old office chairs, their seats faded and stained, stood haphazardly spread out in front of the console. Eight fat-screen monitors of various models stood lined up on a shelf.

"Did you just—" He swallowed and tried to get some moisture to his dry mouth. "Did you just _toss_ me into this room?"

"Sorry," Clint grunted as he manhandled the filing cabinet the last few inches into position. "It was that or taking a face full of lead pellets."

Tony was just about to answer when his eyes landed on something perched on the console on the other side of the room. "No way," he breathed. " _No way_ we're that lucky." He managed to prop himself up on his elbow without graying out again. "Barton, go check that out," he said and pointed at the old rotary phone on the desk, a clunky dark gray Bakelite thing.

"That thing probably hasn't worked since the seventies," Clint said, but he limped over and lifted the receiver, put it to his ear. "Huh. Whaddaya know. It's working." He looked back at Tony over his shoulder. "Can you reach JARVIS?"

Tony made a grabby motion with his fingers. "Gimme."

"The cord is too short. Let's try to get you to one of the chairs."

Tony closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. "Sure. Sounds like fun. Let's do it."

By the time Tony was gently lowered down into one of the chairs, the world was wavering around him again, and he grabbed the edge of the console to keep from falling over. Clint slid the old phone closer and Tony's eyes flitted over the drying blood on his skin as he handed Tony the receiver. He had wiped his palms on his clothes for a better grip on the gun, but that had been his only concession to the grisly mess they'd left behind in that small room.

Tony dialed the number with shivery fingers, listening to the whirring sound of the rotary dialer spinning back after each digit. There was no signal when the last one had been entered, just a slight change of acoustics in the white noise on the line. "It's me," he said.

"I am glad to hear your voice, Sir," JARVIS answered.

"Likewise, buddy. Likewise. Trace this call and get us the hell out of here. Pronto."

"Yes, Sir." There was a two-second pause. "I have your location. Help is being dispatched as we speak. Do you require medical assistance?"

"I've got a hole where I shouldn't have one, and Barton's generally a bit of a mess, so that's a resounding yes."

"Information forwarded. Captain Rogers and agent Romanoff are already moving."

Tony placed his elbow on the desk and rested his forehead against his hand. "Let them know we're in the basement. Or sub-basement. Whatever. Somewhere underground."

"And tell them to expect an unknown number of armed assholes," Clint said from behind.

"JARVIS, you catch that?"

"I did indeed. I have informed the team."

"ETA?" Clint asked.

"One moment, please," JARVIS said in Tony's ear. A beat of silence followed. "Agent Romanoff informs me they will reach your location in thirty-three minutes."

Tony flashed three fingers at Clint twice.

"Tell them to hurry up." Clint slumped down heavily in the chair next to Tony. Something must have hurt, because he winced under his breath. "I'm so done with this fucking place," he mumbled.

"I second that," Tony agreed. "JARVIS, stay on the line."

"Of course, Sir."

Tony put the receiver on the desk between himself and Clint, folded his arms on the console and put his head down to simply breathe for a little while.

He stayed there for a few minutes. When he sat up, Clint was still watching the door, gun in his hand. The relief of hearing JARVIS's voice and knowing that help was on its way had cleared his head a little more, given him a small boost of energy, and he took a closer look at the console in front of him. He realized that his estimation of origin in the seventies or eighties had been generous. This piece of equipment probably hailed back from the end of the sixties. But the operator panels actually seemed to be functional and some even appeared to be in use, judging from the backlit analog gauges and lights that glowed green and red in various places along the long console. Tony used the edge of the console to drag his rolling chair over. He managed to knock his bad finger, and he swore shakily.

A resounding bang on the metal door made them both look. The loud sound rang hollowly through the room. Another bang. And another. The guys outside sounded very motivated to get in.

"You think that door will hold?" Tony asked. It was a metal door, sturdy in the way things from the sixties often were, but it suddenly looked very flimsy in his eyes. It had to hold, it _had_ to, because he knew without a doubt that they would kill Clint on the spot if they got their hands on him. And they might also have gotten over the fact that Tony was only useful if he was alive after seeing the bodies they had left behind in that small room.

"Yeah, we'll be fine." Clint looked down at his hands and wiped them more thoroughly on his shirt. It didn't help much. The blood had dried too much to come off easily. His eyes were scanning the room methodically. Looking for anything that could be used as defensive or offensive weapons, Tony figured. "But just in case they do breach that door and toss anything in here," Clint added, "close your eyes and cover your ears."

"What? You're thinking they have flashbangs?"

"They did back in the garage when they took us."

Fuck. Yes, they did. What else did they have? What if they had acetylene torches and could cut through the door? There was nowhere to take cover if they did. What if they had Semtex or C-4 or ANFO, it could happen, it wasn't too hard to get if you knew where to look. What if they decided to set fire to the entire place? They'd killed Jackson in cold blood, so why not? Jesus. Tony's stomach clenched. They would be trapped in there like rats, and help was still half an hour away. They would burn. They would burn alive, and that— He didn't want that, it would— He didn't want to burn, God, he didn't _want_ that. He wanted to go home. He wanted Pepper. His lab. JARVIS. Silence. Sleep. He wanted to not be here, bleeding at the hands of sadistic assholes who were going to hurt them more. He pressed his hand against his chest, felt his heart pounding against his ribs like it wanted to escape and there wasn't enough oxygen in the air. He sucked in a sharp, fast breath. Another. And another. Not enough, it's wasn't enough, and they were trapped. He gripped the edge of the console as he felt Clint's hand on the back of his neck. He was urged forward until he was half-bent over, his head almost between his knees.

"Breathe," he heard Clint say. "The guys will be here in no time, just breathe."

Tony wanted to snap at him, wanted to tell him that he _was_ breathing, idiot, he was fucking hyperventilating and that was kinda the problem, but he couldn't get a single word out. He tried to hold his breath, tried to count to five in a bid to slow his breathing, but it felt like he was suffocating, and Jesus, he really had exquisite timing for anxiety attacks. _Exquisite_. Another bang on the door pierced the hissing static that was growing in his head, and if he hadn't been so busy freaking out he would have cringed at the whimper he let out.

Clint didn't say anything else, his hand just slid down to rest between Tony's shoulder blades while he worked on getting his breathing back under control. The guys better get here soon, Tony thought desperately, because he was _this_ close to starting to bawl like a kid from it all. From the goddamn pain, from the accumulated fear that had dug its claws in deep now, from the death and blood and memory of Clint's cold voice as he patiently waited for that man to die back there. He didn't want to be trapped in here any longer.

It took way too many minutes, but eventually he managed to calm his breathing. By then he was shivering worse, cold sweat was tingling all over. He stayed where he was, hunched over in the chair. "I hate this place," he said thickly. He stared down at the floor between his feet. A small puddle of blood had collected there. The lightheadedness made gravity uneven and fickle. "Gonna buy the damn block just so I can tear it down."

"I'll operate the wrecking ball," Clint offered and sat back in his chair.

Tony missed the warmth of his hand immediately, because the chills had started up again for real. The fever had been the furthest thing on his mind since Clint had signaled that they were making a break for it, but now it was creeping back to the forefront. "The job is yours," he managed to get out. He ducked his head as a new series of bangs on the door was heard.

"Take it easy. We're okay," Clint said.

Tony gave a hoarse, sharp almost-laugh. "We're really not."

"Point," Clint conceded calmly. Tony saw that his eyes were roaming the room again. "But we will be, and they won't be able to get in before the guys get here."

Tony wiped at his face with the back of his hand, embarrassed now at the meltdown. He could feel the anxiety waiting just out of sight, ready to attack again, but hopefully he would be able to keep a lid on it until he was back home and no one was around except for him and his bottle of Ativan.

"I need to get that off," Clint said and nodded at the belt he had fastened around Tony's leg to stop the bleeding.

Tony looked down at it, at the still glistening blood that had soaked his tattered pants. "It'll start bleeding again."

"Probably. But it can't stay on. I'll rewrap it with the bandages already there." Clint waited until Tony looked up. "Okay?"

"Don't have much of a choice, do I?" Tony mumbled.

"Not really." Clint kneeled next to him. "What's this stuff, anyway?" he made a vague gesture at the console.

Tony gratefully grabbed onto the offered distraction, thinly veiled as it was, and as Clint worked the belt free he examined the console and its controls more closely. Keeping his focus away from the hole in his leg and the new bright blood that welled up helped a little. The under-the-desk drawer screeched against the metal sliders as he pulled it open. He wanted some kind of system description, and for something this old, it would be on paper. He found nothing in the first drawer but dust, a chewed up stub of a pencil, and a few paper clips. The second drawer was completely empty. He yelped as Clint had to tighten the belt a fraction for the buckle to open. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he groaned and flexed the fingers on his good hand restlessly, half wanting to grab Clint's hands and tear them away from his leg, half wanting to grab him and just hold on. He managed to keep from doing either and eventually managed to continue his exploration of the drawers. In the bottom drawer he found what he was looking for; a yellowing booklet which opened up to not only step-by-step instructions for the various aging sub-systems, but also wiring diagrams and block diagrams.

"Looks like we've got the most of the building's systems here," he reported hoarsely to Clint who was carefully unwrapping the bloody bandages. "Heating. Electrical. Water." Tony leaned closer and tapped lightly on the scratched glass cover of one of the old gauges. The needle trembled for a second. "Fire extinguishing system. Security."

Clint looked up. "Security? Can you operate the electronic locks from here?"

Tony shook his head. "They're newer and I doubt they're wired into this Paleolithic behemoth."

"What about that?" Clint twisted and pointed at the other end of the console. "Could that be something for the locks?"

Tony blinked at the laptop that sat right there, fully out in the open. How the hell did he miss that? "Unlikely. I mean, what are the odds that we'd be that lucky?"

He still had Clint bring the laptop over. Logging in was laughingly easy, and he was very grateful that they were lazy, cyber security unaware bastards, because he suspected he didn't have the mental faculties right now to crack it on the fly. User name: admin. Password: admin. He snorted. Idiots. A cry escaped him as Clint tightened the bandage around his leg again.

"Sorry," Clint mumbled.

Tony grit his teeth and counted to ten. Slowly. By the time he was done, so was Clint. His leg pounded hotly and sharply, unhappy about being disturbed again.

"Did you find anything," Clint asked.

Tony drew a wobbly breath. "I was kinda busy over here trying not to scream, so no, I didn't."

He took another centering breath, then checked that the wireless connection was up on the laptop, before starting looking for something that could be an lock control application. No icon on the desktop or in the start menu. He went to the program folder and scanned the exe files there. He found two programs with names that might possibly indicate that there were door locking programs. The first one was a game. He opened the second one.

"Unbelievable."

"What is?" Clint asked.

"I found it." Tony looked up. "The lock controller."

It took only a few minutes to figure out the program. It took a few more minutes to realize that it wouldn't be as easy as he had hoped. "I have all the signals and door lock designators here, but I can't control specific doors."

"Why not?" Clint had gotten to his feet and was making a circuit around the room, inspecting every piece of equipment.

Tony rubbed at his eyes. "I'm a genius, but even I find it a little hard to intuit which actual, physical door out there is represented in here by the designator X2:B2, or X2:Y3, or X1:J3, so unless you have a translation table somewhere over there…?"

Clint frowned. "Did you check for a readme file?"

"Right, because that obviously wouldn't be the first thing I did. Yes, I checked! I searched the whole damn laptop." He picked up the yellowing system manual and waved it at Clint. "There are look-up tables and cross-references to designators for the cameras, for the water valves, the electrical outlets, the sprinkler locations, the goddamn radiators, every fucking system is described in detail in here, except for the locks, because they're new and the asshole who compiled the table probably forgot to move it from his local machine to this laptop."

"Take it easy. Is there _anything_ you can do without that?"

"Lock or unlock all."

Clint gave it a second's though. "It won't be a problem for the guys to get through any door they want, and of we lock them all perhaps we can make a few of the local assholes stay in one place instead of getting in their way." He picked up the phone. "JARVIS. Get Romanoff on the line." He waited for a few beats. "You hear that, Nat? The place is gonna be locked down."

Tony heard the whisper of Natasha's reply over the phone line as he made a few changes to the settings. He placed the mouse pointer over the 'execute' button. "Do I have a go?"

Clint nodded. "Do it."

Click.

"Done," Tony reported. "But anyone on the local network who has this program and the correct access levels can unlock them." He motioned for the phone and Clint handed it over. "J?"

"Yes, Sir?"

"I'm gonna ping you. Do the voodoo that you do and ride the line back. I need you to sneak in and fuck up their network." He brought up the DOS prompt and quickly typed in one of JARVIS's externally available ip addresses. "Take it down, buddy," he said and pressed Enter.

The replay was almost instantaneous. "The wireless LAN has been disabled and I have initiated a DDoS attack which is overloading their router for incoming and outgoing traffic. In addition, I took the liberty of overwriting select parts of the operative system of the machines connected to the network. Reversible, naturally, but as far as your captors are concerned, the equipment is now useless. "

"JARVIS, you naughty boy," Tony grinned tiredly. "Well done."

The battering ram hit the outside of the door again and the air trembled from the boom. Tony looked over his shoulder, the cold fear ratcheting back up a notch. "Jesus," he breathed. "Will the hinges hold?"

"Hopefully. Clint didn't sound quite as confident as before.

Tony looked up at the monitors. Several of them showed people trying to get out of rooms that they had been locked into when every single electronically controlled door down here locked. He watched one guy try to kick his door open, but instead of breaking down the door he stumbled back, grabbing at his foot. Kicking an unyielding door hurt like hell. Tony knew from personal experience and he hoped darkly that the bastard just broke his foot.

On the monitor one step to the left, Tony spotted three men locked in another room. It was tiny. One of them was pulling at the door handle, pounding on the door with his open palm. Tony's eyes narrowed. It was the red-head bastard who had won the rock-paper-scissor game. One of the other two men in the room turned and Tony got a good look at him, too. Fat Trucker. He hadn't seen much of that guy, but he was beyond sure the man had done something to Clint, something definitely not-good. The short, tense encounter between the two back in their cell had told Tony that much.

He quickly scanned the rest of the monitors, and on the furthest one he recognized another asshole locked in a small room. It was one of the guys who had dragged Clint back to their cell and taunted him before taking him away when Tony had refused to call him a whore. His whore. He gave Clint a quick sideways look. Clint was seated half-turned on the chair, one eye on the monitor showing the corridor outside, the other on the door. The gun sat on the console next to him, his hand resting on top of it.

Tony picked up the phone. "How long, JARVIS?"

Nineteen minutes was the answer this time, and shit, that meant Tony's freak out had lasted a lot longer than he thought. Nineteen minutes was so much better than thirty-three, but it was still too long in Tony's opinion. A lot of bad things could happen in nineteen minutes. He inhaled deeply through his nose and exhaled slowly through his mouth. Calm down, Stark. They'll get here soon. They'll get here. Just find something to concentrate on. Find something to do. He pushed the laptop to the side and used the nails on his good hand to pry open what looked like a service hatch in the security section of the console. It revealed a number of clunky circuit boards and old wiring going to the monitors.

"What are you doing?" Clint asked.

"Trying to distract my brain. If it catches on to how much blood is missing, I'm pretty sure I'm going to pass out." It wasn't the number one reason he desperately needed a distraction, but it definitely wasn't a lie.

He squinted at the paper that was taped to the inside of the hatch. It was hard to keep the text in focus. Fuses. F1, F2, F3. He opened the manual and found the corresponding ones in the diagrams. Those were the fuses for the monitors. He gave the real life monitors on the wall a one-second glance. Fat Trucker and company were still trying to get out on the third from the left. As was the bastard on leftmost monitor. He returned his attention to the console and the circuit board before him. His brain had already identified several ways to seriously fucking things up from here and focusing on that was a grounding rod for his frayed nerves. He started tracing the operational flow on the system drawing with a shaking finger. There was an easily accessible ground point. Supply. Decoupling capacitor. Voltage divider. He carefully pushed at a small bundle of wires and couldn't contain the small flinch as a tiny blue spark flashed into life on the circuit board, dying just as quickly. The four monitors furthest to the left suddenly went dark.

Clint looked over sharply. "What did you do?"

"I, uh…" Tony blinked at the spot where the spark had appeared. "I think… I think I shorted them out," he said sheepishly.

"Jesus. Stop messing with it. You're gonna electrocute yourself."

"You forget who you are talking to."

"I'm talking to Tony Stark. Who just shorted out the fucking monitors. Leave it be."

"Well, you…" Tony searched his aching head for something to throw back at him. "You missed that shot in Ankara."

"First of all, that has absolutely nothing to do with anything, and second of all, you threw a _chimney stack_ at me in Ankara."

Tony had to pause for a beat for the rest of the details of that particular outing to crystalize, and when they did, he realized that maybe it hadn't been the best example to bring up. "I was aiming at the mechanized hellhound behind you," he muttered. He crossed his arms miserably tight over his chest as another chill ran through him. "And besides, I gave you a heads up."

"It doesn't count if it comes _after_ the fact, Stark."

Tony looked up at the monitors again. The first three from the right were still alive. The rest were dead. "So what if I killed five cheap-ass stone-age monitors. It's not that big a deal, we can still see what they're doing outside our door." He pointed at the monitor in question. The men outside had apparently caught on to the fact that they were trapped, too, and had abandoned Tony's and Clint's door and started working on getting out. "Besides," Tony sighed, "it's not often I get to explore a museum grade system that still work. It's… cool."

"You think the weirdest things are cool."

"Your girl has her little knife fetish, you like skewering things with pointy sticks, so you don't get to rag on my interests." He looked up. "Please don't tell her I called her your girl."

"Stop messing with stuff and I will consider it."

"Never. It's my raison d'etre." Tony made himself uncurl from his self-hug and picked up the manual again. The spine of the manual had cracked and pages had come loose. He flipped forward a few pages. "This thing is old enough to have a Freon based fire extinguishing system," he said, and the fact that he managed to sound almost normal was a fucking miracle.

"Yeah?" There was little to no interest in Clint's voice, just exhaustion. He scooted his rolling chair closer to Tony again, leaned over and checked the bandages again. The concrete floor was slippery under Tony's foot when he shifted. "Thought that stuff wasn't allowed anymore," Clint said and did something that made the pain in Tony's leg flare bright and vicious again.

Tony cried out and when he opened his eyes, his knuckles were white around Clint's wrist. He managed to peel his fingers away and covered his face in his hands for a moment, breathing deeply as the pain slowly retreated back to the established base-line level of misery. "It's not allowed in new products," he mumbled behind his hands. "Old ones are exempt." He fumbled for the phone receiver and lifted it to his ear. "Please tell me they're close, JARVIS."

"Sixteen minutes, Sir."

Increasing the jet's maximum speed was going straight to the top of Tony's priority list.

Right after this.

At fourteen minutes he had located the actuator outputs to an over-pressure valve here, a check valve there, thermostat, diffusor, compressor, relays. Backups. Redundant circuits.

At twelve minutes he had killed that annoying alarm, had shorted these two valves open and shorted that one closed. Metal paper clips were woefully underrated.

At ten minutes he had managed to scrape his knuckles bloody as he reached into the guts of the console for the wires he needed. He had rerouted this from here to there, shut down that and that and that. He had gotten rid of those secondary safeties, overloaded that pesky relay.

At seven minutes he was done.

Clint's eyes wandered between the monitor and their now undisturbed door, but other than that, he sat stock still.

The clock ticked down slowly, slowly, and Tony counted the seconds silently. His internal timer hit zero and kept going. And going. Then finally he heard the wonderful sounds he'd been listening for ever since he'd woken up to Cortes's first rant about his money. Shouting. Shooting. Banging and booming. Then silence. Tony was at T minus three minutes when a blinding light saturated the camera outside their door and the monitor went white for a few seconds. When it recovered, two of the three men who had tried to get inside were on the ground, and Steve was dispatching the third one. Natasha was already by the door.

"Barton? Stark?"

Tony turned to Clint who was already getting to his feet. He felt almost giddy with relief. "Mind getting the door, darling?"

Clint cast one last look on the monitor before limping to the door and clearing the cabinet and the table from it.

"You're late," Tony said when Natasha stepped inside.

"No we're not." Natasha's eyes ran over Clint who was leaning heavily against the wall by the door, before she turned and headed across the room to Tony. "We touched down twenty-two seconds before our reported ETA. Took us a few minutes to blast through five doors, though." She kneeled and inspected the bandage around Tony's leg wound. "Bring the med kit, Rogers," she called.

Steve showed up in the doorway with the med kit slung over his shoulder.

"Hey, Spangly," Tony managed. He slumped down a little lower in the chair. What little strength he'd found was quickly fading and he had a feeling gravity would take over completely soon.

"Good to see you, Tony." Steve kneeled next to Tony and opened the med kit. He pulled out a roll of bandage and quickly started wrapping it around Tony's leg. He was done in ten seconds. "Just reinforcement until we get you to a proper hospital," he explained as he tied it off. He bent down and slid Tony's arm over his shoulder. "Ready to go home?"

Tony nodded, and groaned as Steve lifted him bridal style.

If he hadn't been in so much pain just then, he might have protested the embarrassing mode of transportation, but he was, so he just held on to Steve as they made it through the compound, past unconscious bodies in the hallways. There was blood, but not a lot. He spotted people rounding up a few non-knocked out persons. Uniforms and plain clothes. They were reassuringly heavily armed. Tony closed his eyes. They were going home. Finally. They were getting out of here, and things were going to be okay. No more six hours windows, no more waiting for them to hurt him or Clint again. He tensed in Steve's grip, suddenly worried that Clint wasn't there. He twisted awkwardly to look over Steve's shoulder and found Clint not far behind. He was limping along next to Natasha, his eyes on the ground as he stepped over unconscious bodies. Then he looked up, and when he saw Tony looking at him, he gave a drawn smile.

Then Tony remembered something else. "Stop. Steve, Stop. Jackson. Clint, we have to find him."

Steve's brows creased. "Who?"

Tony twisted again, because Steve wasn't stopping, he kept walking, and Tony couldn't leave Jackson back there, he was dead because of Tony and the least he could do was take care of him, bring him home. He tried again to get out of Steve's hold, but his position meant every move was agony, and he sagged back into Steve's arms. "Clint," he tried to call, but it came out a moan.

"Who's Jackson?" he heard Natasha ask quietly.

"Tony's chief of security," Clint answered, his voice pitched equally low. "We'll get him, Tony," he said in a normal tone. "I promise. We'll bring him home."

"Will you find him something to wear?" It suddenly seemed very important that Jackson got to keep some of his dignity, even if it was in death. "Clint? Please."

"I'll make sure he's taken care of, Stark," Natasha said. "I'll find something."

Tony closed his eyes against the tears of relief that threatened.

"Almost there," Steve said as he carried Tony up a staircase. His boots clanged against the metal construction, and Tony's head was spinning as they went up and around, up and around, up and around. He opened his eyes as cold air washed over him. There it was. The jet. Sitting beautiful and dark on the flat roof of the building, the strobing position lights on the wing tips flashing bright and sharp in the darkness.

"What time is it," he asked as they headed up the lowered loading ramp at the back.

"Three in the morning," Steve said. "It's way past your bedtime, so we prepared a bed for you." He gently put Tony down and motioned a guy Tony vaguely recognized over. The two of them talked quietly amongst themselves, before the guy stepped up to Tony and introduced himself as 'Matt'.

He started in on a quick, but thorough injury assessment.

"We'll leave your leg until we get to the hospital, but how do you feel about something for the pain, Mr. Stark?" Matt asked when he seemed satisfied that Tony wasn't about to die right then and there.

"Oh, yes, _please_."

Matt rattled off pharmaceutical names and dosages, and someone brought him a syringe. He administered the injection, then moved away towards the back of the jet out of sight. Tony craned his neck and saw a glimpse of Clint sitting on a bench, blanket around his shoulders. Then another guy stepped up to Tony and started wiping down the inside of his arm. An IV was inserted in seconds. This person Tony was sure he'd never seen in his whole life.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Freddy, Mr. Stark. Freddy Friday."

Despite the pain, Tony huffed out a strangled laugh. "My condolences, Freddy."

Freddy grinned as he taped down the IV with sure hands. "My folks had a very strange and cruel sense of humor. They named my little sister Theresa Genevieve Inez."

Tony frowned at him, unable to put together that information into something that made sense.

"TGI Friday," Freddy grinned.

Tony blinked. "They _didn't_."

Freddy's grin grew wider. "No, they didn't."

"Jesus, is he telling that TGI Friday joke again?" Matt sighed as he sidled in next to Tony again. "Give it a rest." He picked up Tony's injured hand from where it rested on his chest. "I'm just going to have a little look here," he said as the jet's engines came to life with a roar, the vibrations in the hull growing and changing with the sound. "Tell me if it hurts."

Tony later apologized to the both of them for all the names he hurled at them, their ancestors and future offspring.

"Would you like more painkillers?" Matt asked, unfazed by the barrage of abuse he had just suffered, and Tony nodded, too breathless with pain to speak. Matt held out his hand and a few seconds later Freddy placed another capped syringe in his palm.

As the brief sting of the needle faded, Tony grabbed Matt's sleeve, because he realized he was probably going to be napping before long. He glanced over at Clint who was strapping himself in, then back at Matt. "Romanoff. I need to talk to Romanoff."

"Sure. I'll get her for you." Matt got to his feet. Tony closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them Natasha was there by his side, looking down at him.

"How are you doing, Stark?" She had that hard look in her eyes that she got after certain outings, the one that he knew wouldn't fade for hours yet.

"Better," he said. It came out more of a mumble than anything. He cleared his throat. "Now that I'm out of there I'm better."

She nodded, then said nothing more.

It took Tony a few seconds to realize what she was waiting for. Oh, right. He had asked to talk to her. Holy shit, those drugs were in a completely different league than Cortes's crap. He licked his lips with a tongue that felt weirdly numb and too large for his mouth. "Listen." He could hear himself slur the edges of the word. "Listen," he said again and tried harder to enunciate properly. "You can't let him get out of a medical checkup this time."

"Clint?"

Tony nodded. "And I mean a full checkup. Natasha, a _full_ , because he needs— Bleeding, he's bleeding, they, they—" He closed his eyes in frustration at his inability to form a coherent sentence. "They hurt him," he managed to get out. "Bad."

When he opened his eyes again, Natasha was looking intently at him and for a split second he felt like putting his hands over his eyes and protecting all the dark and weak spots she might see behind them. But what little strength and coordination he'd had left was gone now, stolen by the painkiller that was mercilessly dragging him down into the oblivion he had wished for so long.

She held his eyes for another couple of long seconds, then dipped her head in a short, precise movement. "I appreciate the heads up," she said, and then she was gone, disappearing back into the cockpit.

In the last few seconds of consciousness, Tony wondered if she had understood what he was trying to tell her.


	10. Chapter 10

Surprisingly, Tony wasn't the one with the nightmares. Sure, he had a few. Most of them were about Clint. Clint getting hurt again and again. Clint being taken away and never returning. Clint being killed.

But it was Pepper who woke up night after night, unsettled and frightened and tearful.

Tony didn't always wake, and she didn't always wake him. Sometimes he just knew from how tired she looked the next day. But this time he had woken from the jolt as she came awake, had heard the silence, and then the first hitching sobs. Tony stretched out under the covers in the darkness, careful not to jar his leg too much, and pulled her closer. She pressed in, her face hidden at the junction of his shoulder and his neck.

"JARVIS," he mumbled hoarsely, "fifteen percent light."

The darkness of the room lifted a fraction, but the shadows remained deep and warm around them. He ran his hand down her back, then up again and through the soft hair at the back of her head. "It's okay. I'm okay, I'm right here."

"I know," she said, her voice trembling wetly.

"And I'm not going anywhere."

"You better not."

It took another couple of seconds before Tony was properly awake. He spent a few mintues playing with her long hair, letting his fingers run through the lengths as she settled down and stopped tearing up again and again. Eventually she took a deep, not quite steady breath and shifted. She curled up on her side, her cheek against his bare chest. Her hand came to rest on the arc reactor.

The bedroom was very quiet, and all Tony heard was her breathing. He glanced down. Her eyes were puffy, her nose red, and in general she was a mess, and he knew he was one of the few people who got to see her like this, without her makeup, without her control, her hair loose and untamed, and this was how he loved her most. He had always appreciated the glitz and glamour, the beautiful things in life, and Pepper fitted right there, god she did, in her high fashion business regalia, in her evening dresses, her high heels. But this, the thought, this was the real Pepper, the person at the deepest foundation of Ms. Potts, the C.E.O of Stark Industries, the always efficient businesswoman, the formidable negotiator, the sharpest business mind he had ever met. This was his Pepper. He pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, and just to counteract the embarrassingly saccharine mood he'd tumbled into he flicked her nose. With a sound that was half laugh, half protest she caught his wrist.

"Jerk," she mumbled.

"That's my middle name. Anthony Jerk Stark."

She gave a tired, low laugh. "I'm pretty sure your middle name is Edward."

"Lies and slander."

They stayed chest to chest, until Tony's leg started protesting the angle and he had to move. "Sorry," he winced.

Pepper sat up. "You okay?"

"Yeah, just a twinge."

"Did you take your painkillers before going to bed?"

"Sure," he lied.

"Tony," she said, disapprovingly.

"I forgot."

She got up. "JARVIS, more light, please." The room brightened. "Where are they?"

Tony looked around. The bottle wasn't standing on the side table as it usually did. He tried to remember when he last had them.

He groaned and slumped back against the pillow.

"What?"

"The lab. They're in the lab."

Pepper sighed and grabbed her robe from the armchair next to the bed. "I'll get them."

"No, leave them. It's fine."

She leaned across the bed and gave him a quick kiss. "I'd rather not have to deal with the sleep-deprived toddler that will show up in the morning if you spend the rest of the night in pain." She gave him a small smile and kissed him again.

Tony rose on his elbow as she headed to the door. "I can get one of the guys to bring them up."

She spun on him. "Don't you dare let one of your _guys_ into the bedroom again."

He raised his hands. "Was just an idea, honey."

"My idea is much better," she told him and headed out the door into the dark hallway that lead from their bedroom. "And much less likely to give me more bloody nightmares," he heard her mutter under her breath.

It didn't take long for Pepper to return, but by then Tony was almost asleep again despite the ache that had started up in his leg. He squinted as JARVIS brought up the lights again, and accepted the glass she handed him. She shook two pills from the bottle and placed them on his open palm. While Tony swallowed them, she let the robe drop onto the floor in a heap and climbed back into bed. She settled against his side again. He felt her fingers on his hand and opened it to allow her to lace her fingers with his.

"I'm sorry I woke you," she whipered. "Try to go back to sleep."

"You too"

"I'll try."

"I'm fine, Pep," he said again.

"I know. But I was so scared," she said, her voice miserable again. "When I watched that video…" She trailed off and squeezed his hand tighter.

"I'm sorry you had to see that."

"I'm sorry you had to live that," she replied.

"Yeah," he mumbled. "But apart from being shot, I had it pretty easy, Pep."

She propped herself up on her elbow, and from the anguished look in her eyes he knew that had been the wrong thing to say. "You could have died, Tony. They could have killed you."

"No, they needed me alive to get what they wanted." He shifted and his leg twinged again. He bit down on a groan. "They had no such qualms about Barton. It was worse for him."

"Don't do that. Don't downplay what they did to you."

"I'm not," he sighed. "They shot me for dramatic purpose, smacked me around a bit. This," he lifted his hand, "this was all me being stupid. All in all, what they did to me wasn't so bad."

"I doubt it," she said darkly. She settled back down again. "Have you seen Clint lately?"

Tony shook his head. "No." He had slept the dreamless sleep of the pharmaceutically blessed at first, only retaining vague memory fragments of waking a few times, of Pepper being there every time, holding a paper mug of water with a straw to his lips as soon as he opened his eyes. He'd been tired and grumpy and in general not fit for human interaction during the next couple of days when the dosages had been lowered and he'd been weaned off the heavy stuff. By the time he even thought to ask, Clint had already been discharged and taken off to parts unknown.

"He visited you, you know," Pepper said. "A few times. Do you remember?"

Tony didn't.

She unlaced her fingers from his and Tony felt them start to run lightly over his knuckles. He was halfway asleep when she shifted and spoke again "Please, don't do that ever again," she whispered.

He pulled her closer without opening his eyes. "What, get kidnapped and shot?"

 _Watch someone get shot in the head? Watch someone be beaten and violated and not being able to do a thing about it?_

"Yes."

He kissed the top of her head. "Gladly."

'* '* '* '*

Tony placed the soldering iron back into its stand and without looking up from his work he pulled the swivel-arm mounted microscope back in front of him. He slid the small prototype board under the glass. The smaller resistor looked good, as did the power FETs he'd replaced. After looking over the rest of the modifications he'd done he pushed the microscope away again and sat up, stretching his back. His leg had started hurting again, it always did in the evening. He rubbed at it and rearranged the pillows that propped it up on the chair next to him. He started when he saw Natasha leaning in the doorway to his lab, arms crossed loosely over her chest.

"Mute," he told JARVIS and the music that was blaring through the speakers died instantly. "Jesus, almost gave me a heart attack there." He waved her in. "When did you get here?"

She uncrossed her arms and stepped inside. "Half an hour or so," she said lightly.

He rolled his eyes. "Bullshit." But a small niggling voice told him it was fully possible that she had snuck up on him and had actually watched him for that long. Creepy. "JARVIS, how long was she standing there?"

"Two minutes and twenty-six seconds, Sir."

"See, what did I tell you. Bullshit."

Natasha just smiled at him.

Tony put the board down and twisted to face her. "So, to what do I owe the unexpected pleasure?" A moment later his brain registered the brown deli bag in her hand, and his mouth started to water. He glanced at the clock. Holy shit. He had been down there for seven hours. No wonder he was starving.

Natasha handed the bag over. "Figured you hadn't eaten today, so I thought I'd bring some food over."

"You _figured_ , huh? JARVIS, you unapologetic yenta." Tony opened the bag and pulled out a Rueben sandwich. "You're an adorable, lovable, wonderful woman," he said and unwrapped it before taking a huge bite. "Don't let anyone tell you differently."

"What? What have you heard?" she asked, faux-offended.

"Nothing. Nothing at all." Tony licked the side of his hand where a trail of dressing was making a break for freedom. He took another couple of bites and washed them down with a mouthful from the bottle of stale mineral water that had stood opened on his desk for the past three days. "When did you get back?"

She'd been gone for a week. And a few days here and there before that. Tony was almost certain that she had been spending time with Clint somewhere. Judging from her faint tan, that somewhere was a lot sunnier than New York City in November.

"A few hours ago," she said.

"Been anywhere nice?"

"Nice enough."

Tony took another bite of the sandwhich. "Is he okay?"

She didn't ask who he was talking about. "He'll be fine."

"I know. That wasn't the question."

"You're not doing him any favors if you think of him - or treat him - as fragile or broken," she said. "And he's not going to thank you for it."

Tony put the sandwich down. "I don't think he's broken. Jesus, he's not a damn vase." I know you're both hardcore BAMFs—"

The side of her mouth lifted in a smirk. "BAMFs? Really?"

"Don't deflect, Romanoff," he snapped. "You're hardcore professionals, I get that, but he's still human, and that back there—"

"Humiliation and violent power games are nothing he hasn't experienced before," she interrupted. "He was injured in the line of duty, and he's healing. That's all there is. That's all you need to know."

"Nothing he hasn't experienced before?" Tony stared at her, feeling sick. "You're saying that… that this happened to him before?"

"I'm not saying anything, and if you feel the need to pursue this topic further I'm not the person you need to talk to.

Tony grimaced. "Yeah, that's not a conversation that's gonna happen." He sighed and rubbed at his face. His eyes felt dry and gritty.

"So how are _you_ doing?" she asked.

"Still sore. Hate the fucking crutches." He paused, then decided to be honest for once in his goddamn life. "I can't stop thinking about what they did to him when they took him that last time. It must have been something real bad, because he was all 'no, no, we're absolutely waiting for the cavalry, it's too dangerous', but when he came back… He went after them the first chance he got."

Natasha pulled a footstool closer with her foot and sat down. "Listen to me, Stark. I have seen him in much worse shape than that, standing his ground to people meaner and crueler than those amateurs. He can take a lot."

"I know."

"No," she said, "you really don't."

Tony opened his mouth to protest, to remind her about all the times he'd seen Clint hurt and brushing it off, but the absolute absence of inflection in her voice stopped him.

"He can take a lot," she repeated. "And that makes me think the reason for his change of tactics wasn't what they did to him, it was probably what they threatened to do to you."

Tony blinked. He hadn't even considered that.

"He'll be fine," she said. "Don't make the mistake of thinking he's hiding because he's too traumatized to get out of bed or something. He's not here because it's not where he wants to be right now. He's safe and doing well, and he's got a number of very skilled resources available if he feels he needs them."

"Seriously? Barton is like the least likely person to seek out help that I know, and I know _me_. You trust him to make that call?"

"Yes."

"Then you know him better than I do," he muttered.

"Yes. I do," she said, and there was something more behind those clipped words, something territorial and darkly protective. He knew a warning when he heard it.

But he still had something he needed to know. Something that had eaten at him ever since that day. "I have a question."

She inclined her head.

"Okay, so don't bite my head off, Mama-bear, but…" He hesitated. "Clint took out Whippet. Cortes's main thug," he explained. "We called him Whippet, because he looked— Never mind, that's not important. But he was the ring leader, the instigator to a lot of bad shit, and Barton said…" Tony swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. "He sat watching the guy as he died and told him he would find his family and hurt them. He wouldn't— He wouldn't do that, would he?"

He realized with startling clarity that he was genuinely dreading the answer.

Natasha took her sweet time to answer.

"We're the monster under the bed, Stark," she finally said. "In the old days, myth and legend would have turned us into demons, into sharp-teethed horrors that appeared without warning in the dead of night, leaving nothing but death and destruction behind." Her lips twitched with a dark, wry smile. "Can't help thinking everything sounded better back then." She turned serious a moment later. "What we've seen, what we've done, it's not pretty, not easily digested by most people, and I'm not saying SHIELD never made mistakes, because we did, big ones at times, but what we did was never without purpose. Was never indiscriminate. So, no, Clint won't go after his family, no matter what the guy did to him." She canted her head and looked sideways at Tony. "But the he died thinking Clint would, didn't he? And I'm guessing that was goal."

Tony nodded, relief heavy in his gut.

"So, now it's my turn." Natasha picked up one of the calibrated IMU chips Tony had laid out in sequential order and held it between her thumb and index finger.

"Shoot," he told her.

"You wouldn't happen to know anything about the guys found dead back there in that compound?"

"Barton took them out. Before he finished Whippet he took care of Cortes and one other guy in there."

Natasha shook her head. "Not them. I know that was him, it had his signature written all over it. I meant the four we found dead in two different locked rooms."

Tony forced his shoulders to relax. "No," he said. "I have no idea." He leaned over and liberated the IMU from her fingers. He put it down and picked up the circuit board he just finished. He slotted it into the body of the small mechatronic crawler he was trying to improve, heard the distinct 'click' of it locking into place, then flipped the power switch and watched its twig-looking articulated legs start moving. He put it down on its back out of the way and let it lie there and flail. He reached for a screw driver.

"Seems like the old Freon fire suppressant system malfunctioned somehow," she said. "From what I understand it's pretty unusual for people to die from Freon-12 poisoning, but turns out if you fill a small enough space with a high enough concentration of it, it will eventually displace the most of the air and you'll die from suffocation."

He reached for the second crawler and started unscrewing the first of the many tiny screws. "I think I've heard of that. Happened on a Japanese trawler not too long ago."

"But see, the curious thing is that the malfunction only occurred in two out of eight rooms. In different parts of the sub-basement. On different physical delivery circuits."

"That is weird."

"Very." Natasha's tone remained carefully neutral. "Turns out those two rooms were covered by cameras connected to monitors in the control room where you guys camped out before we got to you. Monitors that were disabled somehow. Like someone didn't want someone else to see what was happening in those two rooms."

Tony tried to shrug casually. "It was an old system. Once something starts going, it can cascade in strange ways."

"Tony," she started.

"No matter how or who, they had it coming. Trust me."

"Tony—"

"No," he interrupted her again, his voice sharp. He looked up. "You don't get to pass judgment. You weren't there, you didn't see what they did to him, what—"

Tony," she said again, louder, her voice still even.

He glared at her. "What?!"

She nodded her chin at far side of the desk behind him. "Your toy is on fire."

Suddenly the distinct smell of overheated electronics and melting plastic reached him. He spun around. Sure enough, his mechatronic crawler was sparking and smoking, its little legs twitching in death before coming to a stop.

"Motherfucker!"

A small flame was seen climbing from one of the joints and Tony swept the workbench around the smoking crawler clear of stuff to prevent more things from catching fire. He grabbed the fire extinguisher and the moment he pressed the handle, the fire alarm started wailing at an ear piercing level. Dammit. He knew he should have used a larger heat sink for those power FETs. He had suspected they were too small. He just hadn't expected them to overheat like this. Not this fast. Or this spectacularly.

The small fire was out in seconds. "JARVIS, kill the goddamn alarm," Tony shouted over the claxon.

The lab fell silent around him and he stared glumly at the foam covered heap of smoldering electronics. Dammit. _Dammit._

When he twisted, Natasha was gone. He looked around confused. There was no way she could have made it to the elevator and waited for the doors to open and close in the few seconds before he turned.

"Witch woman," he muttered.

From the corner of his eye he saw Dum-E approaching with an extinguisher raised. "You blow my mind, you know. _Now_ you're late." Tony patted the robot's head and sent him back to his charging station. "It's a good thing you're cute," he sighed.

'* '* '* '*

Ten days later Tony saw Clint for the first time since the guy took off while Tony was still loopy from heavy duty painkillers.

"Hey," Clint said.

Tony looked up at the sound of his voice, taking his eyes off the balance bars on both sides of him. He was struggling and cursing and sweating in the rehab room, trying to get back to walking without crutches, because seriously, crutches were the work of the devil, after four weeks he was sure of that.

"Well, well, look what the cat dragged in," he panted. Clint raised his eyebrows at the tone, and Tony saw him exchange a look with the physiotherapist. "Fuck off, I'm a goddamn delight to be around," Tony snapped before either of them had a chance to say something.

"Jesus," he heard Clint say mildly. "Has he been like this all this time?"

"This is a good day," the physiotherapist answered, his hand hovering close to Tony's elbow.

"And that's why I pay you the big bucks," Tony growled.

"That you do, Mr. Stark. That you do."

Tony leaned heavily against both hand bars and lowered his head for a moment, catching his breath. Who knew walking could be so damn exhausting. He waved away the physiotherapist (Theo, he repeated in his head. His name was Theo). "It's okay, you can head out. I'm just gonna finish this, Barton can spot me the last few feet."

Theo looked reluctant, but didn't protest, just packed his things up and left with a polite 'Have a nice afternoon. I'll see you tomorrow.'

Clint stepped up between the balance bars, hands ready to grab Tony should he stumble.

"Get out of the way."

"I'm supposed to be spotting you," Clint pointed out. He was more tanned than Natasha, his hair lighter than it had been before, bleached by the sun on some sandy beach, no doubt. It suddenly pissed Tony off that he'd taken off like that.

"Well, spot me from over there," he growled and motioned to the wall.

Clint just raised his hands in surrender and took two steps back. He didn't move further away than that.

Tony took another step, letting the hand bars on either side of him take some of his weight, but he still had to grit his teeth against the pain. It wasn't as bad as it had been, but it sure as hell wasn't pleasant to put weight on that leg. "Where the hell have you been?" he demanded.

Clint shrugged. "Here and there. Needed a bit of vacation, that's all."

"Would it have killed you to let us know where you were, that you were okay?"

"It's not like I dropped off the face of the earth, Nat knew where to find me."

"Yeah, well, her reports are woefully lacking in things like, oh, I don't know, _information_."

"My mistake," Clint said wryly. "I will send an itemized itinerary next time."

"Make sure you do," Tony muttered. He gave up and took all weight off his leg and used the bars to hop to the end.

"How's it going?"

Tony grimaced. "Slowly." He nodded towards the crutches leaning against the wall. "I'm on those for at least another couple of weeks."

Clint helped him hobble to the bench that was placed along the wall next to the crutches. He handed Tony the folded towel. "I heard they think you'll make a full recovery."

"Yeah." Tony sighed and scrubbed the towel over his face. "Did you also hear that they predict it's gonna take months and months of rehab? I hate rehab. It's too slow."

Clint made a sound of agreement.

Tony spent a few minutes with his eyes closed, trying to recover a little from Theo's brutal session. The walking had been the cool down, the easy part. He could hear Clint move around the room, no doubt inspecting everything. Tony knew he'd had a lot of experience with rehab over the years.

"How about you?" Tony asked and tried to make the question casual. "How's it going? You okay?"

"Yeah, sure. A few weeks of sipping girly drinks on the beach and being tenderly nursed by Natasha, and I'm as good as new."

Tony opened his eyes with a snort of disbelief. "I have seen her bedside manners, so I'm not sure I believe she's capable of 'tender nursing'." He paused. "Is she?"

"Well, I guess that's for me to know, and you to never find out," Clint grinned.

Tony suddenly got the weirdest suspicion that maybe he was telling the truth, as hard as it was to imagine. He had always known the two of them were a tightknit team, and that their connection ran deeper than most people saw. At first he had thought that Clint gained more from it than she did, she never seemed like she needed anything or anyone, but as time went on, he came to realize that the only times she was completely at ease and unguarded were when she was alone with Clint, when she was unaware someone was watching. For the longest time, that fact had convinced him they were together, a couple who kept their relationship on the down, down, _down_ low. It's not like he ever saw them all over each other, but Natasha laughed in a way she didn't around anyone else, moved with just a little less of that classical dancer precision, she seemed more like… He got a mental image of Pepper telling him that 'more like a normal person' was an unkind thing to say, but he couldn't think of another way of putting words to what he saw.

Clint helped him gather his things, but Tony was still too tired to get up and move. He took a sip from the water bottle.

"So, what have you been up to lately?" Clint asked. "Invented something new? Made any revolutionary technical breakthroughs? Blown something up?"

"I removed the lock out function on my money," Tony said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Tony closed his eyes again. "It was a piss-poor strategy."

"Oh, I don't know, that's a pretty good deterrent. People with half a brain aren't quite as willing to kidnap you for your money knowing that you can't give them any. That strategy has probably spared you a kidnapping or two."

"It's just money, Barton. _Money_. It's not like I can't afford a ransom or ten. God knows I can. But nooo, I decided long ago to be a selfish asshole and that's not really something new, is it, but you know what, I don't care if it backfires on me, it happens all the time, but this time, this time…" Tony swallowed. "This time it was you who got stuck paying my tab. Jackson too, and I'm—" He slumped against the wall. "And I'm so fucking sorry for that."

Clint sat down on the bench next to him. He didn't speak for a moment. "I doubt it would have made much of a difference," he said. "Jackson was dead before you even told them they wouldn't be getting any money, and Whippet had already found a personal grudge to hold against me. The two guys I took down in the garage when they grabbed us were apparently his cousins."

"We would have gotten out of there faster if I had given them what they wanted."

And you might not have had to go through all that, Tony didn't add. You might have been spared some of it.

"You don't know that," Clint pointed out. "They might not have planned on letting us go at all after they got the money. And if that was the case, withholding the ransom was what kept us alive."

Tony looked down at the finger that was still splinted, remembered Clint's weight against him, the horrible sounds of pain he'd made. He swallowed. "I keep thinking, 'what if it had been Pepper who had to pay?'"

Clint nodded, but didn't answer.

Tony cleared his throat. "A wife," he said, changing the subject slightly, because thinking of Pepper being hurt like that made something inside go cold and brittle.

"Wife?"

"Jackson. He had a wife.

Clint picked up Tony's towel from the floor, balled it up and launched it at the laundry bin. "I know," he said.

Tony blinked. "You do?"

"Yeah." Clint leaned back and stretched his legs out in front of him. "I looked it up. I wanted to go see her."

"And did you?"

"Yeah."

Tony pulled his sweatshirt jacket on, a flicker of shame deep in his gut. Twice he had gone to the house, but both times he'd been unable to make himself get out of the car. "When?"

"About two weeks ago. She was nice. Two kids."

Tony nodded and lined the two parts of the zipper up. He pulled it all the way up. "I know. Kendra and Cookie." He looked up. "Seriously, they named their kid Cookie."

"I like it. I knew a girl named Cookie once."

"Knew her in the biblical sense?" Tony waggles his eyebrows, but the teasing felt flat and out of place.

"Hardly," Clint snorted. "We were like eight."

"Yeah, well, anyway, I set up a college fund for them."

"That's nice."

The words could so easily have sounded empty, spoken just for the sake of saying something about the gesture that Tony felt was painfully inadequate, but Clint sounded like he meant it. "I set something up for his wife, too. A kind of … extended widower's pension, I guess. I'm having Pepper look over the insurance policies for everyone."

"That's good."

"Do you have anyone?"

"Anyone what?"

"Anyone you want to… you know, make sure they're okay if something happens?"

Clint seemed to think about it for a few seconds, then shook his head. "No."

"Not even Natasha?"

Clint smiled wryly. "She doesn't need anything from me or you to be okay, and she'd kick your ass for suggesting it. But sure, if it makes you feel better, put her as beneficiary on whatever policy you're thinking of setting up for me."

Tony fingered the cuff of the old, comfortable jacket. It was starting to fray in places. "I'm really sorry, Clint."

"Tony—"

"No, I'm gonna say this and you're gonna hear it." He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry you were there. And I'm sorry they did those things to you. That's on me."

Clint rubbed at his eyes. "Jesus, Tony. Just so you know, I have very little love for martyrs. You asked, I chose to go. It was my decision. If you need to pin the blame somewhere, then it's on me and Jackson for not doing our jobs and making sure the garage was secure before taking you down there."

The sat in silence for a few moments, then Tony rolled his shoulders and sat up straighter. "You let me know if you need anything. If you want anything." He turned and faced Clint straight on. "I mean it."

"I don't need you to get me anything. But if you wanna _do_ something for me…" Clint looked at him.

"Name it."

"You talking to someone?"

Tony's brows rose. "What, like a shrink?"

"Or Pepper." Clint shrugged. "Or, I don't know, your hairdresser?"

"Yeah, sure, 'cause I always chat about horrible torture and death with my hairdresser. I toss it in right between 'can you believe this weather' and 'how about them Yankees'." He shook his head. "I'm not big on the whole therapy thing, I'm really not, but Pepper asked very nicely, hinting at withholding sex indefinitely unless I," Tony made air quotes, "worked through it. So, yeah. I've got someone."

"Pepper's a shrewd woman."

"That she is." Tony frowned at him. "That's it? That's what you want me to do for you? Talk to a shrink?"

"No." Clint shook his head. "I mean, that's a good thing, don't get me wrong, you should definitely do that, but I figured since you've found another, and probably infinitely more qualified talking partner in all this, maybe, uh, maybe we," he made a vague gesture between the two of them, "maybe you and I could stay away from this topic." He dropped his hand. "Like, forever?"

Tony had to admit that the proposal held a bit of allure. "Okay," he said. "Yes, okay. I can actually live with that."

"Yeah?"

"Want me to pinkie swear on it?" He offered his pinkie.

Clint laughed, a tension Tony hadn't even noticed was there melting from his stance. "That's okay." He got to his feet.

"My previous offer still stands, though," Tony said and peered up at Clint. "Anything you want, Barton."

Clint pursed his lips. "What if I want pizza?"

"Ugh. I've had pizza for the past three days." Tony let Clint help him up. "Did you know there actually _is_ such a thing as too much of a good thing? How about burgers? Real ones, with onion rings on the side, from The Zocal—"

"I waaaaaant piiiiizzaaaaa."

Tony almost stumbled at the volume. "Jesus. What are you, five?"

Clint grinned. "They're not one hundred percent sure about the year I was born, so my age is uncertain. But I've heard that number thrown around a few times, so I figure it's thereabouts."

" _Fine_." Tony took the crutches Clint offered. "Pizza it is."

~ The End ~


End file.
